


Sovereignty

by jolach



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Casual Ableism, Crossdressing, Drag, Drunkenness, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Oral Fixation, Original Character(s), casual sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 06:57:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14231769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolach/pseuds/jolach
Summary: A hockey rookie joins the campus drag troupe. Sasha didn’t know they even had a campus drag troupe. Sasha hasn’t been paying a lot of attention.





	Sovereignty

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I was a college drag king. Yes, this is largely an exercise in wish fulfillment. Let me have this.
> 
> Warning for casual ableism and sexism, alcohol, and mention of sexual contact under the influence.
> 
> Who does and does not show up in this fic is largely a function of whim and whom I had jokes for. Relative ages, time period, and the functioning of D1 college sports are entirely handwaved.

Madison is a good freshman, and he knows the rules. Sasha can tell there’s something on his mind, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and his head down for the entirety of the team meeting, but he’s waiting his turn. Rookies go last.

“OK,” Sasha says, “So Holtz has Show and Tell next month.” He glances over at Jojo to make sure somebody is writing all this shit down. “Holtz, you know what you wanna do?”

Braden stretches out in his armchair of choice and waggles his fingers. “We’re gonna learn about _kombucha_ , boys,” he says, and laughs as the room groans and boos.

“Tell me you aren’t making that shit in the house,” Backy says flatly next to Sasha on the couch.

Sasha elbows Backy in the side. “You know the rules. Show and Tell, we are support.” Backy thumps Sasha in the thigh, but nods, which is why Backy is Sasha’s A and why the house and team have remained mostly under control for the past year and a half.

Braden raises his eyebrows expressively. “Catch me if you can.”

“Five points to anybody find Holtz’s secret lab before Show and Tell,” Sasha pronounces with finality. “OK. Almost done. Any new business?”

He pauses and scans the room for a few silent seconds, eyeing the juniors and seniors first before looking back at Madison, who finally puts his hand up.

Whatever it is, he’s already told the other frosh. Vrana’s eyes are darting from face to face, nervous, and Djoos has that mask of serenity on that reminds Sasha so much of Backy. They flank Madison on either side, backs to the wall. Sasha loves his team.

“Bowey,” Sasha says, nodding, giving him the floor.

“I have an extracurricular,” Bowey says, stepping forward a little bit. Sasha nods again. Hockey, technically, is itself an extracurricular, if you don’t know anything about hockey. The team practices together. The team eats together. Half the team lives together. Anything that’s gonna take time away from that has to be shared with the team first.

“I’m joining The Sovereign Set,” Madison says, arms still crossed. Sasha doesn’t know what that is, but Braden inhales sharply in a way that makes him think maybe he should. “It’s the campus drag troupe,” Madison says, holding eye contact.

What? “We have drag?” Sasha asks. He knows the jokes people make about athletes on campus living in their own little world, but damn, he really does not know what’s going on anymore.

Madison nods. “Huh,” Sasha says. The room is very quiet, which he knows he shouldn’t let go on too long. He’s not sure what questions to ask. He’s confused, but his confusion is big enough that it’s tough to break it down into its component parts. “Cool.”

“What’s the time commitment?” Backy asks, and Sasha could kiss him.

Madison puts his hands in his pockets. “Not too much. One or two weeks each semester for the shows, and they know I’ll have to work around the team,” he says. He shrugs. “They’re flexible.”

Sasha can be flexible. “OK, we look at schedule together this week.” He tries to keep his face neutral. “Need to make sure team can come to shows.”

 

* * *

 

Sasha snags Braden with a look as the team filters out from the meeting, and Backy and Greenie can communicate telepathically, so the four of them convene in Sasha’s room without a lot of fuss.

“We’re gonna be cool about this, right?” Braden says, leaning with his back against Sasha’s door.

Sasha scoffs. “Of course,” he says. He loves his team. He loves his frosh. Sasha didn’t become captain as a sophomore by not being cool about the right shit. That being said. “What is cool for this?”

Greenie will keep an eye on things in the D corps generally. They’ve got their own weird traditions and relationships that Sasha appreciates and finds completely opaque, so it will be good to have somebody taking care of things up close. Sasha will talk to Snarls, too, for extra insurance.

Braden takes classes in the Drama department that have words like kinetics in the titles, which means he has the most connection to the world of the theater kids. This mostly has meant that he dates lots of stunning women who refuse to ever hang out in the hockey house, but Sasha is happy to have him get more inside knowledge on the Sovereign Set and fill the rest of them in.

Backy—Backy just reads over Sasha’s text to Madison before he sends it. “Take off some of the smilies, you look deranged,” he says, handing the phone back. “It’s fine.”

_very exciting))) want do weights w me tomorrow morning, talk about?_

 

* * *

 

Sasha’s not surprised Backy’s handling it well. Backy’s always good at handling surprises with grace.

Like when they had been freshmen, and Backy had ignored the senior screaming at him and called an ambulance when they found Semin passed out in the backyard. Sasha can still remember his round face, resolute, dragging Semin around the house by himself until Sasha had jumped in and picked up his legs.

Or like last year’s Spring Fling, when Sasha had gotten a little too fucked up and kissed him in the middle of the mosh pit. Backy had very graciously let Sasha get halfway through a blowjob in some abandoned basement suite with an open door, and then had very graciously rubbed Sasha’s back as he threw up in the sink, and then had very graciously never brought it up again.

 

* * *

 

 

Madison is a very good spotter. He counts the reps steadily as Sasha finishes a set, arms shaking just a little as he lifts the bar a final time and racks it. He doesn’t try to show off when Sasha spots for him, either. He’s smart. Smarter than Sasha had been as a freshman.

“So,” Sasha says as they stretch in the empty weight room. “You always know you want to do? Or is surprise?”

Madison doesn’t flinch; he makes a face like he’s genuinely thinking about it. “Uh, both?” he says, reaching for his toes. “I mean, I knew I wanted to do it,” he says. “Just didn’t realize I’d, like, actually be able to.”

Sasha hums in agreement and tries to stretch out his hamstrings. Fuck, he’s tight. Maybe he really should start accepting Braden’s invitations to hot yoga. “How did you start?”

Madison grins with his forehead almost touching his knee. “My sister,” he says. “She used to take me to shows. Sneak me in when I was sixteen.”

Sasha raises his eyebrows. “They have drag shows in Winnipeg?”

Madison laughs, big and bright. “I mean, they have drag shows here, so maybe you don’t know where they are or not,” he points out, and Sasha can’t argue with that.

“I should go see one, maybe,” Sasha says, testing the waters. Madison nods a little absently. “That would be OK?” There’s a set to Madison’s eyebrows that Sasha doesn’t love. “What would be good?”

Madison takes a deep breath and sits up. “I don’t know yet,” he says. Sasha can appreciate that. Madison scrubs a hand over his face. “I don’t know. Things could...” he trails off. “Things could be very good, or very bad,” he says.

One of the things that makes Sasha a decent captain is his memory. He’s got a good one. He remembers how it had felt to be a freshman, to be a teenager, to stake everything on the thing that meant the most, which has always been hockey. It’s easy to lead based on that shared experience. He meets Madison’s eyes in the mirrored wall of the weight room and is certain he has no idea what it feels like to be him.

“Anything bad now?” he asks.

Madison shakes his head, which undoes at least one knot in Sasha’s stomach. “Things are OK. Other frosh are good,” he says, and Sasha remembers Vrana’s tension and Djoos’s calm.

“Good,” Sasha says, getting to his feet and bouncing a little. It always feels good to work out early in the morning. He’ll be energetic all day now. “Listen,” he says, as Madison gets up too. “I’m know...nothing. About anything. But you tell me what would be good, and we’ll do it.” He waits until Madison meets his eyes. “Yes?”

Madison grins and rolls his eyes. “Yes,” he says, and Sasha claps him on the back.

“Good. Only question, now: you are going to hurt yourself in tall shoes?”

“Oh, definitely not, I’m way too good.”

“Ah, always you are make me proud.”

 

* * *

 

Madison texts Sasha a YouTube link that afternoon.

_The Sovereign Set Holiday Spectacular_  
_December 15_  
_44:19_

Sasha texts back a fire emoji and then sends a message to Braden, Greenie, and Backy. Greenie texts back first.

_i’ll bring the beer_

Sasha’s room is the biggest, so they set the projector up in there and squeeze shoulder-to-shoulder on Sasha’s bed.

“To new experiences,” Greenie says, popping the top off his beer with his keychain. Sasha will drink to that.

“Speak for yourselves, some of us have fucking culture,” Braden says, but the video is starting so Sasha shushes him.

The video quality is terrible, muffled sound and shaky phone footage that’s blocked by people’s heads half the time.

There’s barely a stage to speak of, just an empty space in front of a brick wall with bright lights pointed at it. There can’t be more than fifty people in the crowd. When the first performer walks out, they scream so loud it blows out the phone’s speakers.

“Holy shit,” Sasha says. And then the show starts for real.

Sasha doesn’t entirely get it, but he doesn’t have to get it. Not all the jokes land filtered through a shakycam and a second language, but he can still hear the crowd laugh. He can’t quite see the performers’ make-up, but he can still hear the whoops and whistles every time someone new takes the stage. Someone in thigh-high red boots and a tinsel bra asks for a volunteer from the crowd and then proceeds to perform all of Santa Baby while seated in her lap. How can anybody not enjoy that?

It’s big. It’s loud. It’s not at all subtle, and the crowd screams for more every time. Sasha actually might get it a little bit.

“Listen,” he says, gesturing at the screen with his second empty. “So much love. Is great.”

Greenie opens him another beer. “So you wanna go?”

Sasha grins at him. “I want to be Santa.”

Backy snorts next to him. “Because you need more attention.”

Sasha looks away from the video for a moment, waiting until Backy gives in and meets his eyes. “Yes,” Sasha says, still grinning, and then looks away.

 

* * *

 

Sasha is making a valiant attempt to do his French homework for real and not just copy from Kuzya when his phone buzzes with a text from an unknown number.

_Is this Alex Ovechkin?_  
_Braden gave me your number, this is Cole from TSS_

Way more interesting than French.

_hello!! is me)) whats uppp_

Cole doesn’t reply for ten minutes.

_Can we meet this week? Want to make sure we’re on the same page about some things_

Sasha didn’t know that drag troupes had captains. Neat.

_tomorrow? 1pm? i can meet wherever, no practice)))_

 

* * *

 

Cole has a perfectly smooth shaved head, surprisingly defined biceps, and zero interest in being Sasha’s friend. That’s fine. Sasha can usually outlast people on that front.

He’s also ninety percent certain Cole was the one in the tinsel bra, but he’s not quite sure if there’s etiquette around asking. He can watch the video again later.

They meet in the dining hall, and Sasha takes five minutes to load up a tray like usual before plopping down across from Cole, who has a cup of coffee and the crossword. Cole eyeballs the pile of meat on his plate. Sasha shrugs.

“How athletes eat,” he says, spearing a chunk of chicken with his fork.

“I’ve never had an athlete in my troupe before,” Cole says. “Forgive me for my ignorance.”

Sasha smiles with his mouth closed, chewing. He swallows. “He will be good,” he says. “Hard worker. Smart.”

Cole narrows his eyes. “I know.” He waits a moment. Sasha chews. “How is this going to go?” Cole asks, finally.

Sasha shrugs. “I don’t know, first time for me too,” he says. He thinks for a moment, moving chicken around his plate with his fork. “Team leaders want it to be good. Not sure how to do it.”

Cole raises his eyebrows. “Have you asked Madison?”

Sasha raises his eyebrows back. “Yes, am only a little bit idiot,” he says, and takes another bite. “He says he don’t know. I tell him, he knows, he tell me, we do.”

Cole hums and takes a sip of coffee. “I told him the same.” They sit in silence for a moment. “I’ll tell you what I don’t want,” Cole says, eventually.

“Please,” Sasha says. Might as well not waste time.

“I don’t want this kid to feel like he has to pick,” Cole says, and Sasha nods. “And I don’t want the space we’ve built to have to cater to hockey culture.”

That gives Sasha pause. He pokes at his food. “Say more.”

Cole runs a hand over his smooth head. “Our crowd. The people who come to see us. They make it work,” he says. “It’s special, and it’s safe. Don’t fuck that up.”

Sasha nods. That’s fair. “I watch video, I think I know what you say,” he says. “Madison send to me,” he explains at Cole’s surprised look. He gets what he means about the crowd. About it being special. He wants to join in. He also knows that rooms change when he and ten of his teammates walk into them. “We come to show, I promise, we sit in back, only yell good things.”

Cole leans back in his chair and gives Sasha an appraising look. Sasha smiles at him with his mouth full, and Cole grins back. “OK. We can start with that.”

Sasha swallows. “I want to be Santa one time, though,” he says, and that makes Cole laugh outright. Sasha is satisfied. “How do you know Holtz?”

Cole grins again. “Hot yoga.”

Sasha gestures with his fork excitedly. “Yes! OK, tell me, is good? I am like old man, cannot go to NHL like this.”

 

* * *

 

Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, Backy comes to Sasha’s room to work on his problem sets and complain. When he has papers and programs to write, he goes and hides in the stacks where he can avoid seeing other people for a couple hours at a time, but for problem sets, he likes to spread out on Sasha’s floor and bitch. Sasha always looks forward to it, even when Backy is bitching about him.

Sasha doesn’t understand why Backy picked a major like Computer Science when they’re both just going to go to the NHL, but he doesn’t argue with him about it anymore. Especially when Backy brings snacks.

Backy knocks on his door at 3:30 PM and then walks in without waiting, tossing a bag of chocolate-covered pretzels to where Sasha is sitting on the bed.

“Late,” Sasha says, setting his laptop aside and ripping into the bag.

“I had a meeting,” Backy says, setting his backpack on Sasha’s desk. He pulls out a handful of pamphlets, rubber-banded together, and tosses those to Sasha too.

Backy plops on the floor and takes out his laptop and notebook while Sasha flips through the pamphlets. _True Colors. Athletes and Allies. LGBTQ Resources on Campus_.

“You bring me more homework?” Sasha asks, keeping his voice light. Where did he get all this stuff? He opens up the _Athletes and Allies_ one. There’s a whole organization on campus for this? Where has Sasha been?

“Does the Poli Sci department do homework?” Backy says, because he’s an ass, and he’s an extra special ass when he’s doing p-sets. “I talked to a Peer Counselor for half an hour to get those, you could at least read them.”

Sasha raises his eyebrows and looks down at Backy, who absolutely does not look up from his laptop. His hair escapes from under his hat, little curly golden wings. “You talk to Peer Counselor?” Sasha remembers them vaguely from freshman orientation. He wasn’t sure they really existed.

“She’s in my InfoSec section,” Backy says, then starts chewing on a pen. That means he’s done talking for a bit. Normally that doesn’t happen until he’s spent a good twenty minutes filleting a TA or an assistant coach or his brother in absentia, but if he’d rather just clam up today Sasha can live with it. He’ll be back in two days anyway.

Sasha sighs heavily, because he can, and then starts reading up on gender expression.

 

* * *

 

At breakfast the next day Sasha makes himself the world’s largest waffle and then sits down between Braden and Snarls and across from Madison, who seems to be on a mission to eat the dining hall’s entire supply of bacon. Nice.

Sasha steals a slice off of his plate. Captain’s privilege. “I know is hard to believe,” he says, chewing. “But my English, not always perfect.”

Madison snorts and drinks some orange juice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sasha waves the bitten-of piece of bacon. “I know. Very close. But sometimes get things wrong,” he says, watching Madison’s face. “You should always correct. Even though am captain. Can tell me use wrong words, wrong, what is, pronouns.”

Braden aspirates some of his coffee.

Madison grins. “You’re doing fine.”

OK. Good to know. “Just saying. You should tell. Very bad, let captain embarrass whole team,” he says, and covers his waffle in syrup.

 

* * *

 

Sasha meets with the coaching staff at least once a week. Sometimes alone, sometimes with Backy. That’s the captain’s job. He goes over the lines with them, and talks about team morale, and weighs in on decisions that the head coach decides to share with him. He’s new, the replacement after their old coach got fired last season, and he’s still learning how to trust Sasha.

He and Backy don’t talk about it beforehand, and they don’t talk to Coach about Madison. It’s none of his business.

Sasha’s leading their whole division in points. They’re winning, too, for the first time in a while. And it’s Sasha’s team.

He knows about the scouts in the stands. He knows the offers will come over the summer. The NHL instead of a senior year. He’ll probably go. He should have gone last year, probably. But until that moment comes, until his room in the house is cleared out and a new captain is chosen and these people are somebody else’s, it’s his goddamn team.

 

* * *

 

Madison doesn’t live in the hockey house, but he still has a key, so Sasha isn’t surprised to see him studying in the basement when he wanders down to bring a case of beer upstairs.

He is surprised to see Cole there, along with a handful of unfamiliar faces. Vrana’s there as well, bless him, sitting on the floor and staring quizzically at a Latin textbook alongside somebody with hot pink hair.

Cole lifts a hand and waves desultorily. “Always a pleasure, Alex,” he calls across the basement, and Sasha waves back. It’s a study group. Sasha’s seen a hundred of them. This one just seems a little more... _something_ , and not just because of all the hair dye. They’re part of something. He can tell. The look on Madison’s face as he laughs at a mumbled joke is one that you only get when you belong.

Sasha knows very well what it is to belong. It’s what he loves so much about hockey. He’s just never seen one of his boys have that same look somewhere else.

He’s also never seen Vrana rest his head that way against Madison’s knee. Sasha pauses a moment, arms weighed down, and considers tossing off a chirp or a meaningful look. He shifts the beer in his arms and makes the active decision to ignore it. Captain’s privilege.

 

* * *

 

Sasha gets the event invite over Facebook. _The Sovereign Set Presents: Midterms are a Social Construct_. Sasha doesn’t get it, but he happily RSVPs anyway.

Curious, he takes a look at the invite list. Just him, Greenie, Vrana, and Djoos so far from the team. He sends Madison a text.

_yes!!!!! can invite boys? what u wanna do? very exciting)))_

It takes a few minutes for Madison to respond.

_talking to greener about it! thx. will figure out soon._

Sasha knows that the blue line has a special relationship. That’s fine. He doesn’t mind.

When Greenie texts him half hour later he nearly knocks the phone off his nightstand.

_come to our room when u have a sec_

One of them probably could have made a play for one of the single rooms in the house this year, but Backy and Greenie have always liked rooming together. That’s cool. Sasha gets a single room automatically.

Sasha knocks and then walks in. Backy is lying flat on his bed, playing with his phone. Greenie’s cleaning off the whiteboard they hung up in here last year. “You talk to Bowey?”

“Mm-hmm,” Greenie says, dry-erase marker in his mouth. “Wants to invite the team.”

Sasha punches the air. “Yes!”

Backy snorts from the corner. “There won’t be a Santa this time.”

“Still,” Sasha says, pointing a warning finger at him and rejoicing when he smirks. “Good news, yes?”

“I think so,” Greenie says, taking the marker out of his mouth. “And he says he doesn’t want us to make a big deal about it. But still...” he trails off, and writes _PLAN_ in giant letters at the top of the whiteboard. “We should think this through.”

Backy makes a noise from his bed. “We should do what he wants.”

Sasha waves a hand at him. “We come up with plan, tell Bowey, he says yes or no,” he says. “You want to send Latts and Wilso to this, no plan?”

Backy doesn’t say anything, but he puts his phone down and swings his legs over the side of the bed. That means he’s on board.

The three of them stare at the whiteboard.

This goes on for a while.

“OK,” Backy says, breaking the silence. “Start simple. Do we do the invite as a group, or one at a time?”

Greenie makes a face. “As a group kind of seems like making a big deal out of it.”

Sasha shrugs. “Should not be like secret,” he says, and Backy nods. “Everybody should know we’re going.” A thought occurs to him, and he turns to Backy. “You are going, yes?” Sasha’s excited, but he doesn’t want to do this alone.

Backy grins. “If I get an invite.”

Greenie rolls his eyes. “He’s so excited to have something to be a shit about.”

“Who knows, maybe I’m not invited, I’m just the fucking A,” Backy says, still smiling. “OK. So we say something.”

Greenie writes in careful block letters. _TELL TEAM WE’RE GOING_. He turns and looks at Sasha. “Next team meeting?” Sasha nods. _AT NEXT T.M._

Half an hour later, Sasha looks at the fully-covered whiteboard. It’s...well, it’s a plan, at least. He takes a picture of it with his phone.

“Sending it to Bowey?” Greenie asks.

“Not yet,” Sasha says, typing.

He expects a text back. Instead he gets a call.

“Cole, I’m put you on speaker,” he says when he picks up.

“Gentlemen,” Cole’s voice comes down the line, tinny.

“What do you think of plan?” Sasha asks. Backy hops off the bed in one smooth movement and ambles over toward them to be closer to the phone.

Cole laughs. “I think you’re overthinking it, but that’s OK,” he says. “Listen. Just...” He trails off and sighs. Sasha hasn’t even said anything yet. “Just don’t treat it like a joke, OK? And don’t let anybody else treat it like a joke.”

“We won’t,” Backy says, serious.

“I’m just saying,” Cole says. “I know how dudes can be, with the fucking, like, Halloween costumes and balloon tits. This isn’t that.”

That’s fair. “OK,” Sasha says. “The show has jokes, though, yes?” He remembers that from the video.

“Oh, yes, we tell jokes. Very funny ones,” Cole says, and Sasha can hear a laugh in his voice. “But we aren’t the joke.” He pauses. “Technically, _you’re_ the joke.”

Greenie snorts. “Not very nice, but OK,” Sasha says. “Thank you, Cole.”

“Don’t make it a habit,” Cole says. “Just tell everybody they’re pretty and don’t act like it’s a joke and you’ll be fine.”

After they hang up, Sasha sends the whiteboard picture to Madison.

_team always ready!!!_

Madison sends back a string of cry-laughing emojis, and Sasha finally feels solid enough to go to sleep.

“You want to stay and play Mario Kart?” Backy asks, folding himself into a seated position in front of the Nintendo.

“Fuck, please, yes,” Sasha says, and falls down half on top of him. Let Greenie laugh all he wants. He’ll red shell his ass later. Backy pats him blindly on the back of the head, and Sasha finally relaxes for real.

 

* * *

 

Some of them have midterms the next day, and some of them quietly beg off, but in the end there are fifteen hockey players attending the upcoming amateur college drag revue.

“How much are tickets?” Sasha asks Madison, sidling up next to him in line for the water fountain in the weight room. “Facebook does not say.”

Madison gives him a funny look. “It’s free, dude,” he says.

This cannot be. Sasha is learning a lot of new and interesting things, but this he will not accept.

“Free?” he hisses. _“Free?”_

Madison’s eyes go a little wide. “...yes? It’s not a big deal, the theater space doesn’t cost anything and we spend like a week rehearsing.”

Sasha cannot believe what he is hearing. “But how do you pay for shiny things, tall shoes?”

Madison shrugs. “We’ll do a fundraiser party later, get some new makeup and stuff,” he says. “That’s more than enough.”

Sasha clicks his tongue as Madison fills up his water bottle. “Bowey. Baby. What are we teaching you here? Your time is money, never do nothing for free. You work hard, should get paid.”

Backy laughs behind him. How long has he been there? Sasha turns around. “You know we play hockey for free, right?” Backy says. His shirt is sticking to his chest, just a little.

Sasha rolls his eyes. “Yeah, well, those rules I don’t make. Am working on it.”

Backy makes his little pursed-lips-raised-eyebrows face that drives Sasha up the wall. “Oh, good. You tell me when the check is in the mail, then.”

“Ah, fuck you,” Sasha says, then bends his head to take a long drink. He stands and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “We get Bowey paid first, then I deal with you.”

 

* * *

 

Sasha keeps his word to Cole. When showtime comes, he and the team get there with plenty of time to spare, but they take the tables at the back. It’s set up cabaret-style, tall tables and chairs scattered at the same level as the brightly-lit stage.

After some hearty internal debate, Sasha had opted to lead the team in a very reasonable pre-game, toasting to an absent Madison with two shots apiece before leaving the house. Burky keeps trying to touch Djoos’s hair, and Backy has smiled at him twice since they arrived, but everyone’s got their inside voices on. Sasha thinks he’s nailed it.

It’s a good place for people-watching, sitting at the back as the crowd filters in. It’s mostly groups, other tipsy upperclassmen who seem like they’ve been here before and who rush to the front tables. There are obvious freshmen, too, clusters of three and four who tuck themselves into seats at the edges and bounce their legs. Even a few singletons, tentatively taking empty spots at fuller tables. Sasha recognizes a face or two from class, but nobody he knows well.

Sasha knows that there are plenty of little worlds out there he doesn’t understand, just like he meets people all the time who don’t understand his hockey world. It’s just a little different being thrust into the middle of one.

It’s cool. It makes him curious. It makes him a little bit pissed at himself, even though he knows that isn’t fair.

By the time the doors close, every seat is filled, and there are people standing along the back wall. That’s a fire hazard, but Sasha isn’t gonna say anything. This is really fucking different from a hockey game.

The lights go down, and the crowd whoops, led by the folks sitting toward the front. Sasha joins in, clapping, and Backy elbows Burky to get him to shut up and pay attention.

Nobody’s attention drifts for long.

It’s not—it’s really not a _polished_ show, all things considered. Madison had told them up front that they threw these things together in a week, and that makes sense. The audio cuts out once or twice. Several costume pieces appear in multiple acts. The lights get cued by the performers saying the word “lights” offstage, and the audience laughs every time.

The audience. The _audience_. The audience heralds each performer like they’re a golden god, banging their fists on the table and cheering. The boys get into that pretty quick—Sasha doesn’t have to turn around to recognize T.J.’s enthusiastic whoops. Every joke, every piece of choreography, every sexy look: the audience elevates each one, recognizing it and blasting it back at the stage at full volume. Sasha is used to adoring crowds. He’s never known anything like this.

And it works. Sasha falls a little bit in love with every person who comes onstage. He laughs until he cries at a genius solo Carly Rae Jepsen lipsync, and just regular cries at a slow piano number that he doesn’t even know. Even though the singer is wearing cat ears and a leather vest. He doesn’t understand what the song is about, but the singer’s voice is clear, and the crowd is hushed and reverent, and that’s good enough for him.

He’s ultimately glad he isn’t sitting up in what the MC—Cole, in a beautiful lace gown with a matching parasol—describes as “the splash zone.” He’s always open to lapdances, but for now it’s more fun to see the performers interact with their regulars. A woman he recognizes as the goalie of the women’s hockey team gets handed a rose in the middle of a boyband-inspired number, and the look of raunchy delight on her face is going to stick with Sasha for weeks.

Their team should co-host stuff with the women’s team more. What has Sasha been doing this whole time?

Sasha is just starting to get concerned that Madison got sick or stage fright when Cole comes out to announce the final number. “If you’ve been around a while,” he says, spinning the parasol, “and I know lots of you have been _around_ —” the crowd whistles and cheers, “—then you’ll know we always end with a number from our first-timers. Our rookies. Our virgins.” The crowd fucking explodes, and Sasha pounds on the table with both hands until Backy grabs his knee and shakes it. Sasha doesn’t care. Sasha loves everything about this.

The lights go down, and there’s a breath of silence, and then a familiar voice in the dark. “Lights,” he says, and the lights come on, and three figures stride out from behind the curtain, and Sasha loses his entire damn mind.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Burky says off to his left. “He’s _Beyoncé_.”

There are three of them, the pink-haired person Sasha had seen in the basement, someone with a blue wig and more tattoos than Greenie, and there’s Madison, a towering superhuman in six-inch heels.

He is _very_ good at the Single Ladies choreography. He fills that dress out _very_ well.

How does anybody do what he’s doing? How does anybody do what he’s doing and smile like that the whole time?

A sound and touch filters through the crowd noise and the music, and Sasha realizes Backy’s got his face hidden against Sasha’s shoulder, shoulders shaking as he tries not to laugh. Sasha socks him in the leg. “What?”

Backy tips his head up to whisper-shout in Sasha’s ear. “Burky’s _so_ jealous,” he says, and Sasha glances over, and fuck, it’s true.

“He should be,” Sasha says, grinning, and Backy grins back, a real one.

“Fucking right,” he says, and Sasha whoops and cheers, and if this is what _he’s_ feeling, he hopes Madison gets to do this for the rest of his life.

 

* * *

 

The boys stay at the tables after shouting their lungs out at curtain call, waiting as the crowd starts to disperse and the performers filter out from the dressing room to mingle with their adoring fans. Madison does wander out eventually, still made up but in sweats and without the wig. The team cheers and waves, but a quick look from Sasha is enough to keep them in their seats, waiting for him to wander over as he greets other friends first.

Other friends. Huh. Sasha doesn’t know what it’s like to want anything more than—or even as much as—the team. There’s nothing else he can think of. But if Madison does, and Madison can have it, then, well. Sasha’s going to do his damnedest to make sure he gets it.

When he finally does start walking over, the dam breaks, and the boys leave their seats like they’re jumping over the boards, hooting and chirping. Burky and Djoos both join the rush, leaving just Sasha and Backy and Vrana at their table.

V’s been quiet all night. Sasha slides him a look.

Ah, fuck it. Why not. Sasha would prefer not to have his rookie chew all his fingernails off, anyway.

He nudges V in the side with his elbow. “I have source,” he says quietly. “Says good idea, tell him he’s pretty.”

Vrana snaps his head up, and gapes like a fish for a second before closing his mouth, nodding, and sliding out of his chair to join the rest. Kid’s got wheels. That might be the most effective pep talk Sasha has ever given.

Sasha turns to watch V go, and finds himself in the pathway of a full-blown Backy Look. “What,” Sasha says, trying to keep his smile under control. Normally when he gets a Backy Look it’s because he’s doing something sensationally disruptive. This barely counts as making trouble.

Backy drums his fingers on the table. The house lights come back on one section at a time. “That was nice,” he says, finally.

Sasha shrugs. “I am nice,” he says, which is true. He probably deserves the look on Backy’s face anyway, but still. This is a fun night. He’d like Backy to smile again. “And read some very good pamphlets.”

Backy huffs and rolls his eyes, which is almost as good. He gets out of his chair. “Come on,” he says, nodding towards the boys. “Let’s go be nice over there.”

Sasha follows. He doesn’t know how to want any more than this.

 

* * *

 

Madison has an afterparty to go to, but the boys get in a few questions before he goes.

What’s harder, skating or walking in heels? Heels, but only because he started skating sooner.

Why did he take the wig off? She’s a pretty lady, but she’s _heavy_ , and he wants to go dance.

“You can teach how to do that?” Kuzya asks, hanging all over Snarls.

Madison gestures toward the stage. “What I did? No,” he says, and laughs, and Sasha laughs too.

Kuzya grins. “No, yes, but. You can teach some?”

Madison looks at Sasha, who shrugs. “We have Show and Tell next month,” he says, and Kuzya punches the air.

 

* * *

 

When Madison leaves for the afterparty, V goes with him, and Sasha sees their hands linked as they duck out a door.

It’s nice. It’s really nice. He’s happy for them. It’s a happy thing. It’s a miracle, an absolute fucking miracle, it’s unbelievable. Sasha didn’t believe that could happen. Even after everything, Sasha didn’t know that was possible, somehow, until right now.

 

* * *

 

Things are normal, afterwards. Of course they are. Sasha’s proud of his team, that they’re all taking this in stride and not freaking out. Nobody should freak out. They all had fun.

Sasha figures he can throw out the pamphlets now.

He’s standing above the recycling bin in kitchen—Braden had instituted a very strict system when he moved in—when Greenie wanders in to make his usual nighttime coffee. When does he _sleep?_ What do they _do_ in there?

“I could go with you. If you wanted,” Greenie says, and Sasha squints at him, confused, until he looks at the pamphlets and sees the _Athletes and Allies_ one on top. “To a meeting. If you wanted to go,” Greenie continues, carefully. He’s watching Sasha out of the corner of his eye like a wild animal, which is ridiculous. Sasha’s cool with the situation. Sasha’s _great_ with the situation. What’s he gonna freak out about?

“This? Oh, no,” he says, sliding them in the recycling. “Just. Research for team earlier.”

“Uh-huh,” Greenie says, turning the coffee-maker on. “I mean, we could still go. Learn what other teams do. Meet some people.”

Sasha thinks about the women’s hockey goalie. It would be nice to know her. But still. “Eh,” he says. “Is not—I think I am too old, now.” They aren’t quite the right words, but close. He won’t even be here next year, probably. What would be the point.

Greenie puts a mug down heavily on the counter. “Too—all right,” he says, closing the cabinets. “OK.” He walks out of the kitchen, and Sasha can just hear him mumble under his breath as he goes. “Unbelievable.”

Jesus. If it means that much to him, Sasha will play along. He fishes the _Athletes and Allies_ pamphlet out of the recycling and sticks it to the fridge door with a magnet. There. That creates a nice, what is it, inclusive environment. And Greenie can go to whatever meetings he wants.

 

* * *

 

Sasha’s still leading the division in points. In their next game he gets two goals and an assist. One goal he scrambles over the line on a rebound after Madison sends a goddamn bomb from the blue line that nearly takes the goalie’s hand off. The other one comes off an assist from Backy so beautiful, sauced over two defenders’ sticks and meeting Sasha right where he is, that Sasha has to slam Backy into the boards to celebrate. The happy sound that Backy makes is almost brand new, and Sasha celebrates by getting blackout drunk in his room and sleeping through a French presentation in the morning.

 

* * *

 

The boys are very excited for Show and Tell. _Sasha_ is very excited for Show and Tell. Based on a few sideways questions during morning workouts, Madison is even excited for it.

“I was thinking maybe we could try walking in some heels,” Madison says, wiping down the treadmill.

Sasha stands with his hands on his hips, breathing heavy. “You gonna need,” he says, gulping air, “A lotta big shoes.”

Madison makes a face. “Yeah, folks will probably have to trade off.”

It may be the lack of oxygen that gives Sasha the initial thought, but when he’s still thinking about it after he showers and walks home, he decides it must actually be a good idea.

 

* * *

 

Backy’s right. They don’t get paid to play hockey. But hockey alumni cover a lot of the rent for the house. And the boys all pay dues to a big slush fund that Sasha controls. And Sasha, though he still quite hasn’t learned how to talk about it, has always had money.

“I still don’t trust you,” Cole says as Madison, Sasha, and Braden cram into his car. He turns around and gives Sasha a wolfish grin. “I like this idea, though.”

Sasha thinks it’s very reasonable. Cole and a few other members of the troupe will help Madison with Show and Tell. The hockey house will buy all the stuff that they use for it. And then TSS keeps it.

Sasha loves to go shopping.

They don’t travel far, just to a strip mall a few miles away. It still feels like a field trip. So much of Sasha’s life is contained on campus, or buses, or hockey rinks he can barely tell apart. Sasha likes to go to new places. He should get a car.

The beauty supply store is an adventure in and of itself. Sasha is content to just follow behind Cole with the shopping cart, picking up the things he throws in and asking Madison to explain what they are. Some are obvious: bottles of makeup in various skin-colored shades, boxes of little fake eyelashes, stockings in every size. A dozen lipsticks in colors Sasha has never seen anybody wear before.

He pulls a packet of what could almost be steel wool out of the cart and looks at Madison quizzically. “Oh! Stipple brushes,” Madison says. “Good for, like, fake stubble. For drag king makeup.”

“Ah! Yes!” Sasha says. He had liked the kings. Like his boys, but better at dancing and eye contact. “They are coming too? Great.” Sasha can grow his own stubble, but some of the team could actually use some back-up.

The thrift store is even better. Sasha doesn’t know much about makeup, but he absolutely knows about clothes. He leaves Cole and Madison to sort through the shoes and makes a circuit of the store, grabbing things off the racks that look fun and bringing them back for approval or rejection. Braden shakes his head at almost everything, but Cole continuously overrules him. Even on the mesh jumpsuit. Sasha is having a great day.

He finds a snakeskin skirt. He finds a velvet suit. He finds a gold dress, covered in sequins with a modest neckline and a scandalous slit. He finds a box of costume jewelry, $1 apiece. He brings it all to Madison. Is this good? Is this right?

They find ten pairs of shoes that will work, and buy about half of Sasha’s pile as well.

It’s not a small amount of money, in total, but it’s less than the hockey house has spent on some parties, and the way Madison chatters in the passenger seat about the workshops they might start doing for youth groups makes Sasha’s heart sit happily in his chest. He can do this. This is good.

“You are throwing party for raise money soon, yes?” he interjects. “When?” Sasha wants that on his calendar in red.

Cole makes a face in the rearview. “We wanted to do it next weekend when some of our alums are in town, but I don’t think we can,” he says, flicking on his turn signal as they turn down the streets that start to transition fully from the outside world back into campus. “Might have to wait until next semester.”

Next semester Sasha probably won’t even be here. “What’s problem?”

Cole sighs. “The African-American Cultural Center was gonna let us use their space,” he says, “But they had a water main break. Totally flooded. Repairs are gonna take a while.” He shrugs. “Just shitty luck.”

Sasha looks over at Braden on the other side of the backseat. He raises his eyebrows. Braden takes a second, but he’s a quick study.

“Really?” he says.

Sasha grins. “Why not?”

Braden makes a face. “We gonna tell Coach?”

“Pfft,” Sasha says. “Not Coach’s house.” He turns to face front. “How big you need?”

 

* * *

 

What follows over the next few days are some only slightly tense and fairly one-sided negotiations between Sasha and Cole. Yes, the house is big enough, if they bring the basement into play. Yes, they can leave the bedrooms and upstairs off-limits. Yes, TSS will still help with Show and Tell—they’ll just do it the day before the party and leave their shit there. Yes, Sasha’s OK if they don’t list the hockey team as an official co-host, though he doesn’t totally understand why.

Cole sighs. “I’m worried folks who might otherwise come...won’t. If it seems like it’s an athlete thing.”

Sasha frowns. “Won’t change if we make it secret.”

Cole takes a long sip of nighttime coffee, leaning back against the kitchen counter. “True. But it won’t change if only straight people show up, either.”

Sasha nods. That’s fair, even if it chafes. “OK. We do how you want. Your party.”

Cole holds his coffee cup in both hands and squints. He taps his fingernails against the ceramic. “I don’t understand you,” he says, finally. “But this goes well, I’ll be honest about it.” He shrugs. “That might change something. Or start something.”

“I don’t understand you either,” Sasha says, leaning back against the fridge. “But still, I like you anyway.” Both are true. Sasha can’t imagine Cole’s life, but he likes him, his shaved head and shitty car and perfect manicures. When Sasha pushes, Cole slams right back. That’s always been his favorite kind of person.

Cole barks a laugh. “You don’t know me, Alex,” he says, not unkindly. “But I’m glad you like what you know.” He drains his coffee and puts the cup in the sink. “Also, if you want to get it right, it’s not a party. It’s a ball.”

 

* * *

 

The gym is efficient, but sometimes Sasha likes to get his exercise from doing something real, which is why he has a few clunky, indestructible bikes shoved in a corner in the basement. The weekend comes with a beautiful false spring, no-jacket weather, and Sasha intends to enjoy it.

He intercepts Backy coming home, fuzzy and quiet after a couple hours in the stacks, and bullies him into leaving his backpack at the house and taking the second-best bike out for a spin.

“Come on, next week, will be piss rain again, will be cold, make your nose drippy,” Sasha says. Backy glowers, says something in Swedish that can only be rude, and goes to put on better shoes.

There’s a park at the top of a towering hill just beyond campus, and Sasha’s legs burn as they climb towards it. The back of his neck sweats. The sunlight through the barely-budding trees strobes over his face as he sprints up the hill. Backy’s behind him, but Sasha can still hear the rattle of his bike, following close.

The view from the top is great.

You can see the whole campus from up here. The gym, even the rink, father away but still visible if you squint. The house. Frat row. Sasha’s dining hall of choice. The tall spire of the library stacks. It’s laid out like a snowglobe. It’s beautiful, and small.

“You know what you’re doing?” Backy says, a little out of breath.

Sasha turns to look at him, red-faced and still standing astride the bike. There’s a breeze up here, soft, and it tugs at Backy’s hair. “Throwing a party? Yeah, I think we have done before,” Sasha says.

Backy gnaws on his lip and looks out at the view. “Might not be that simple,” he says, quiet, so low that Sasha might not even have heard it if he hadn’t already known the frequency.

Sasha waits for him to look back. When he doesn’t, Sasha shrugs at nobody. “What if it is?”

Backy doesn’t say anything.

On the way back, Sasha picks the steepest path down the hill and screams his adrenaline all the way home.

 

* * *

 

When the text pops up, Sasha takes a second to be soothed just by the sight of cyrillic, then laughs at the actual words.

_You have not called me in a while. You forget who raised you. Ungrateful._

It is indeed pissing rain again, but Sasha still wanders out onto the back porch before calling Sema.

“I am sorry, Sanya,” he says as soon as he picks up. “Forgive me.”

“I will have to get traded to San Jose for you to remember me,” Sema says, familiar and acidic, and oh, Sasha had forgotten how much he missed him. It feels good to put a name to that particular ache, at least.

“Please, what does San Jose need you for, they are waiting for me,” Sasha says, and sits on the sagging couch. The rain is coming down in curtains. “Good goal on Friday. We all watched. I’m sorry I didn’t text.”

“I don’t expect better,” Sema says. “I know who I’m dealing with.”

“How many penalty minutes are you up to, now?” Sasha asks, innocently.

“Fuck you,” Semin says. “You know I talk to other people, right? In English, even.”

Sasha flicks a cigarette butt off the arm of the couch. If someone on the team is smoking fucking cigarettes he’ll make him eat them. “Greenie should mind his own business.”

“Not just Mike,” Sema says. “You want to tell me anything?”

“No,” Sasha says.

There’s a pause in which Sasha just listens to the rain rattle in the house’s fucked-up gutters. “Good,” Sema says. “Figure your shit out yourself.”

“I promise,” Sasha says, looking up at the porch ceiling and checking idly for leaks.

“Just—whatever you figure out,” Sema says. “Sasha. It will be easier now than it will be in a year, OK?” Sasha frowns at the ceiling. “It is not going to get easier than it is right now. So figure it out soon.”

Sasha squeezes his eyes shut, hard enough to see shapes bloom behind his eyes. “OK,” he says.

“OK,” Sema says. Sasha wonders what the weather is like where he is. Is he somewhere rainy too? Closed up in a hotel on the road? Who is watching his back? “Now tell me about Kuzya. He calls me, actually, which is why he’s my favorite, but it’s so hard to find film of college games. Are you taking care of him? How is he skating?”

 

* * *

 

The house has never been so clean.

Sasha didn’t even threaten anyone into doing it, which is the really surprising thing. Stuff just starts disappearing over the course of the week. Stuff Sasha had stopped even seeing, like the pile of magazines that had been stacked in the living room since before Sasha had moved in.

Someone has cleaned out the refrigerator. Someone has swept the cigarette butts off the porch. Someone has vacuumed the damn rugs.

Sasha is in the living room reviewing game film on his laptop with Burky’s head in his lap when he sees a blond flash disappear around a corner. It had been wearing pink rubber gloves.

Sasha sighs and pauses the film. Burky groans. “Let him go,” he says as Sasha stands up.

“Finish watching on your own,” Sasha says. “Pay attention to the centering passes.”

Backy isn’t in the kitchen, or the downstairs bathroom, or the basement. Sasha finds him in the backyard, rearranging the lawn furniture that got buried and blown around during the winter snows. The picnic table got flipped over entirely, somehow. Sasha hadn’t even noticed.

“You want help with that?” he calls from the porch.

Backy looks up sharply, then relaxes a little when he sees who it is. He stands up straight and looks at the picnic table. He wipes at his forehead with the back of his wrist. He looks up at Sasha. “Yes.”

Between the two of them, it’s easy enough to set the thing aright. The legs sink a little into the ground, still soft from the rain, but it’s sturdy. Backy brushes the dirt off the top of it with his gloved hands.

“What next?” Sasha says, looking around. “Will be nice outside soon, should get some little lights or something.”

“Next is upstairs bathroom,” Backy says. Sasha tips his head back, groans, and then follows Backy inside.

 

* * *

 

Most of the time, Sasha gives the team a little leeway about the things they do outside of practice. They have to spend time together nearly every single day. If somebody needs to bail on bonding time, there will be plenty of chances to make up for it.

Show and Tell is always mandatory.

He won’t pretend they’re all equally compelling, or equally thought-through. He’d enjoyed it when Latts had scheduled his for a Bachelor marathon. He’d sat through it with respect when Brooksie had shared passages from his favorite self-help books. It makes them a better team. It makes him a better captain. It had meant the world to him to see his teammates watch his mother’s highlight reels, Kuzya and Sema quietly translating to the guys sitting near them.

This is by far the biggest production they’ve ever had.

Twenty-five hockey players crammed into the house, sitting on tables, leaning against walls, perched on the back of the couch. Five members of TSS, each laden with tote bags and trunks. And Madison, presiding over it all, six foot six in platform heels.

Sasha would have been happy for Madison to present a sixty-slide Powerpoint on how exactly he figured out he wanted to do this, but Madison’s a little smarter than he is. He and the rest of TSS set up a couple different stations: clothes and tapes of old shows on in the living room, make-up scattered across the kitchen counter, and high heels lessons on the back porch.

They’ve also all got nametags, which was good thinking, and Sasha spends two minutes going through all the markers in their big plastic tub before carefully printing _ALEX/OVI, C, HE/HIM_ in shiny gold Sharpie and smoothing it over his chest.

Kuzya had made a break for the porch as soon as Madison had finished explaining the stations, and Sasha wanders outside to find him. He’s already got his sweatpants rolled up, sitting on the couch and sorting through the heels laid out in pairs. Sasha sits down next to him.

“I’m not sure you’re ready for those,” he says in Russian, nodding at the pair of lime green shoes Kuzya has set aside. They look to be at least five inches tall.

Kuzya slits his eyes at him. “Go big, go home,” he says in English.

“Go home with broken ankle,” Sasha shoots back. Kuzya’s response is cut short by Madison coming outside with V and Braden in tow. “You are teacher?” Sasha asks.

“Hell yeah,” Madison says. “Everybody else would go way too easy on you.”

It’s not easy, but it’s not as hard as Sasha assumed it would be, either. He nearly tips over the first few times, grabbing Kuzya’s shoulder and almost taking them both down, but Madison’s good. “Weight on your toes,” he reminds Sasha, and after a few wobbly steps Sasha starts to get the hang of it.

Sasha doesn’t remember learning to skate, but he bets it was harder than this. Then again, he isn’t trying to dance just yet.

It takes a while to get used to using muscles he doesn’t normally rely on, but eventually he walks the length of the porch without wobbling. “Yes!” he shouts, throwing his hands up in the air. Madison claps politely, and Kuzya laughs at him. “Fucking hurts, though,” he says.

Madison gives him a sympathetic look. “Yeah, takes a bit to get used to it.” He glances down at Sasha’s feet. “Those might be a little small, actually.”

Sasha had picked the lowest heel that he could squeeze on his feet, something black with a round toe. “Weak,” Kuzya says, tossing his head and shifting his weight.

Sasha snorts at him. “Yeah, you can walk two steps in those?” he challenges, nodding at the green shoes Kuzya has managed to get upright in.

“Don’t rush genius,” Kuzya says, haughty.

V is like a baby deer at first, clinging to both of Madison’s hands as he stands up, but after five minutes he’s better of the rest of them, practically running back and forth across the porch. Braden’s good, too, not as good as V but more comfortable faster. So comfortable that Sasha gives him a suspicious look.

“You remember Hilary,” Braden mutters under his breath, and oh, yeah. Sasha does remember Hilary. Good for her.

After a couple false alarms, Kuzya manages to walk unaided in his green obsessions. “Sasha, you can do better than those,” he says, withering, and Sasha is about to spend half an hour having a walk-off to make sure Kuzya remembers his place when another group of guys stick their heads out onto the porch.

“Can we try?” Whip says, mouth red with lipstick, and Sasha grins. “Holy shit, Holtz, those make your ass look _awesome_.”

Sasha wanders back inside on bare feet and ambles through the living room, where TSS has opened up tubs of accessories. He’s contemplating a boa when Greenie catches his eye and waves him over to a corner of the room. Sasha tosses the boa over his shoulder and goes.

Greenie’s deep in conversation with a TSS member who can’t be taller than 5’2”, hair slicked back and plaid shirt tucked in. Their name is Moose, apparently. That’s a good name.

Greenie slaps Sasha lightly on the chest. “Ovi, listen to this,” he says, then turns back to Moose. “Tell Ovi what you just told me.”

Moose’s voice is soft and low, and Sasha bends over a little bit to be able to hear. “We were talking about drag names,” Moose says. “Like how Madison goes by Josephine onstage.” Sasha remembers that, the elaborate introductions each performer had gotten.

Greenie raises his eyebrows at him. Sasha doesn’t follow. “Dude. It’s the same,” Greenie says. He turns back to Moose. “Hockey players all have team nicknames. They’re not as, uh, creative, but still.”

Moose grins, bright smile splitting their face. “Yeah, and Madison told us about the garters, too.”

“Fuck,” Greenie says as Sasha laughs. “That’s supposed to be secret.”

In the kitchen, he finds T.J. hopped up on one of the counters while Cole fiddles with his face and Jojo looks on. Cole glances over when Sasha walks in. “Alex, you’ve been hiding this one from me,” he says melodically, and T.J. grins. “Stop moving.” He holds T.J.’s jaw firmly in his hand. “How do you feel about false eyelashes?”

“Bring it on!” T.J. says, heels kicking against the cabinets.

“He don’t need be more pretty,” Sasha says, leaning against the kitchen island across from T.J..

Cole tsks. “Don’t be jealous.” He looks over to the corner, which is when Sasha first sees someone rummaging in the fridge. “Mary, would you distract him so he doesn’t distract me?”

A pink head pops out of the fridge and looks over. “Oh, absolutely,” she says.

Mary is nearly six feet tall herself, with tight pink curls and a ring in the middle of her nose. She efficiently herds Sasha up onto the kitchen island without saying a word or even touching him. Sasha briefly considers falling madly in love with her. He’s probably not her type.

She brushes some of his hair out of his face and eyes him up critically. Sasha doesn’t mind. He’s not new to scrutiny. “You going to make me pretty?” he says.

She doesn’t laugh. “You’ve got a good face. I’m just trying to figure out what to do with it,” she says. She smooths a thumb over one of his eyebrows. Sasha can’t help but lean into it a little bit. “You’ve got really strong features up here, so I’m gonna focus on those, OK?” Sasha doesn’t know what that means, and he doesn’t care. He just nods.

Experts have been touching Sasha since he was a kid. It’s easy for him to zone out. Let them do their work, move him around. He doesn’t mind being touched the way some of the guys do. He’s glad. He knows that makes things harder on them.

Mary’s adept hands on his face are a little different than a trainer digging into his muscles, though. Her instructions—close your eyes, look up, hold still—are sharp, but her touches are careful, almost delicate. He’s never been more aware of his eyelids.

“Looking good, O,” he hears T.J. say, somewhere to his right.

“I can open?” he says, trying to keep his mouth still.

“Mmm...yes,” Mary says, and Sasha opens his eyes.

“Jesus Christ, Teej,” he says, and T.J. flutters his heavy new lashes and laughs. “You are single? What you are doing after this?” Cole really didn’t do that much to him besides make his eyes seem about twice the size and doing... _something_ to his mouth, but it makes a difference. T.J. doesn’t look like one of the over-the-top heavenly angels onstage, but he absolutely looks hot.

“I’m good at what I do,” Cole says. Sasha cranes around Mary to look at him, but Cole is already working on somebody else, standing between his knees. Sasha recognizes those knees.

“Uh-uh,” Mary says, directing his face back straight with a finger under the jaw. “Eyes closed, now.”

He can still listen with his eyes closed.

“I did T.J. up pretty natural,” Cole says quietly. “You want something like that too?”

“Fuck no,” Backy says without heat, and Sasha’s hands tighten helplessly on the counter and he can’t stop the smile from taking over his face.

Mary tsks. “You could make this easier,” she says. “OK, eyes open. We’re almost done.”

Sasha opens his eyes again, and Mary smiles at her work so far, tilting her head to the side. She looks fond. Sasha crinkles his eyes back at her. It’s nice of her to do this for Madison. For him.

She rummages in a dingy tote bag, looking for whatever her next implement is. Sasha tries not to stare through the back of Cole’s head. “How did you learn how to do this?” he asks.

She hums, pulling out a couple of shiny tubes that Sasha can’t identify. “Makeup I’ve known about for a long time,” she says. “Look up at the ceiling for me?”

Sasha complies, and is treated to the brand new sensation of someone intentionally touching his eyelashes. He tries his damnedest not to blink. “Kinging is different, though I still use makeup for that,” she continues. “Moose showed me how. They’re my drag father.”

She steps back, and Sasha catches up on all his stored-up blinks. “Father?” he says.

She nods. He can see a tuft of Backy’s blond hair over Cole’s shoulder, curled around Cole’s long fingers.

“They taught me how to bind, how to walk, how to do my face,” she says. “Helped show me the ropes.”

Oh. “We have things—not so different,” he says. “When Kuzya, he is also Russian, when he get here, I show him everything.” Whip still calls Backy _papa_. “But—when you start. Why?”

Mary cocks her head again, slitting her eyes at him. She opens up a second shiny tube. “Open your mouth,” she says. Who is Sasha to say no? Mary sighs heavily. “I never liked rules,” she muses, sweeping something sticky across Sasha’s lower lip. He resists the urge to lick at it. “I always wanted...” she trails off and sighs, humor in her voice. “I wanted everything.” She shrugs. “Drag gives me everything.”

She swipes across his top lip. “Drag reminds me that the rules are for other people,” she says, giving him a conspiratorial look as she closes the tube. “You want to see?”

Sasha nods, silent and a little confounded. She grabs a hand mirror off the island and hands it to him.

He—damn. He looks different. Not unrecognizable; Mary couldn’t have been working on him for more than ten minutes. But his face looks—he looks like a drawing of himself, almost, angles of his face sharper, eyes standing out from under his brows. There’s something silver on his lids, and perfect black lines above and below his eyes. Whatever she put on his mouth isn’t colorful, just shiny. He’s kissed girls who look a little like this before. Neat.

“You like it?” Mary says, and Sasha raises his eyebrows at her over the top of the mirror.

“Am going to stare into my eyes myself all night,” Sasha says, and she laughs. He hands her the mirror back.

“You sure you don’t do that already?” Cole calls back without looking, and Sasha can hear Backy snicker. “All right, butch queen, come over and let me see you.”

Mary pats his knee. “I don’t know how you do, but thank you,” Sasha says, hopping down off the island. His face feels a bit odd, heavy and almost tacky, but it’s still cool.

“If there’s time tomorrow before the ball, I’ll do you up again if you want,” she says, and he ought to give that more attention and proper thanks, but he’s too focused on what Cole’s doing.

“Come around, don’t be shy,” Cole says, still focused on his work, and Sasha finally, finally gets to look.

Backy’s eyes are closed while Cole—it looks like he’s _glueing_ something to his eyes, though that surely can’t be right. His hair looks different, and Sasha has to look at it a second before putting it together, the way most of it is pulled to the side and hanging in curls with the rest pinned carefully behind his ear.

His lips shine violet. There must be—Cole must have done something, painted that on outside the lines. He doesn’t normally—that’s not what Backy’s mouth normally looks like. Sasha wants to keep looking. He wants to figure it out.

Cole finishes whatever he’s doing to Backy’s eyes. “OK, hold still like that for a minute while it dries,” he says, and then turns to look at Sasha. “Oh, Mary, very nice,” he says. He reaches out and pauses just before he touches, waiting until Sasha nods to brush some of the hair out of his face. “You look right out of an Annie Lennox video.”

Sasha grins. “I don’t know who that is,” he says. He’s still looking at Backy, trying to sort through all the different pieces of this face he knows and doesn’t know. His eyebrows look darker. Is that a thing that you can do?

Cole pats his cheek brusquely. “I know, buddy,” he says. “But it’s a good thing.” He turns back. “OK, Nicky, you can open your eyes.”

Backy’s eyes open, seemingly with some effort. He wrinkles his nose just a little, the way he does when the equipment staff switches laundry detergent or a ringtone goes off in a public place. “Feels weird,” he says, and then his eyes flick over Cole’s shoulder to Sasha, and his eyes had already looked impossibly green, and now they go impossibly wide.

Sasha doesn’t intend to stop looking.

Cole’s done something to his skin, put something on him that leaves him looking smooth and pale like a mask, but Sasha can see the flush underneath it, the way it crawls down Backy’s neck and under the collar of his ratty t-shirt the longer Sasha looks.

Cole is talking about something. Sasha is sure it’s very interesting.

Backy is doing a good job of pretending to pay attention, but his eyes flick back to Sasha’s face, again, and again, and every time Sasha sees something new. The way his ears have gone pink. His pale lashes almost hidden by the dark false ones Cole has given him. The way he can’t seem to stop pressing his lips together, testing the feel of the lipstick.

“—might do pink instead of purple if I had a second go at it,” Cole says, and Sasha snaps his attention over.

“No, purple, is good,” he says, and Cole turns to give him an incredulous look.

“Oh, you’re the expert now, huh?” he says, and Sasha is about to explain that yes, in fact, he is, when a wolf whistle comes from the entrance to the kitchen.

“Hot damn, Nicky, you clean up OK!” Greenie says, Kuzya right behind him, still tottering on his heels.

Backy laughs, grin wide and a little lipstick on his teeth, and blows Greenie a kiss. Greenie mimes catching it, then hops up on the counter next to him. “Can I be next? I wanna be Dita von Teese,” he says, and Mary laughs in his face, and the spell is broken. Kuzya insists on taking selfies with Sasha and his new face, and honestly it _is_ important for them to find a way to get the green shoes in the shot, and by the time they’ve found the right pose and documented it appropriately Backy has slipped out of the kitchen.

It’s OK. Sasha will remember. Maybe tomorrow he can get a picture.

 

* * *

 

It’s not his eyes that come back to Sasha that night, well past when he had planned to be asleep. It’s not his eyes, or his hair, or the shape of his mouth that has Sasha staring at the ceiling with his arms crossed over his chest.

It’s the flush.

Sasha’s seen him go pink like that before. Drunk, usually. Sleep-deprived. Laughing at his own joke.

Sasha hadn’t realized it could happen if you looked at him too long.

He hadn’t—Sasha would look at Backy as much as Backy wants. If he wants. Backy just usually positions himself out of the line of sight, solid and steady just beyond Sasha’s peripherals. Sasha never has to look to know he’s there.

Sasha hadn’t considered that Backy might want people to go looking. But Sasha would. If he wants. Sasha would be happy to.

Doesn’t Backy know that?

Fuck. Sasha rolls over, burying his face in his pillow and clenching a fist in his sheets. Fuck. What the fuck has he been _doing?_

 

* * *

 

Sasha hasn’t had class on Fridays since second semester freshman year, and he’s been 21 since September, so he and Braden handle the final liquor run in the morning.

He checks the Facebook event before he goes. Four hundred people RSVP’d. A couple hundred more maybes. The campus cops are definitely gonna get called.

Awesome.

After they’ve bought enough slightly shitty beer and very shitty liquor to take down half a graduating class, Sasha sends some strategic text messages. He’s not too worried about a poor showing, but still. This is a fundraiser. He ought to throw a little weight behind it.

The social chair of the Kappas, who he helped Sema smooth things over with. His old ESL tutor who still runs shit at the Glee Club. The drum major of the marching band. Sasha still has a lot to learn about the world, as becomes clearer to him every day, but he’s not _totally_ clueless. The marching band should be there in force.

Sasha may be on his way out, but he still has some pull.

This should be an extremely good party.

Not a party. A ball.

What is Sasha going to _wear?_

Madison and Djoos and about half of TSS are sorting through the clothes in the living room when Sasha and Braden get back. Sasha grabs a dozen items at random and heads for his room.

“Hey, nobody else has looked yet!” Djoos shouts after him.

“Captain’s privilege,” Sasha shoots back without turning around. There’s no arguing with that.

Sasha dumps the clothes on his unmade bed and gets to work. He follows his instincts in his day-to-day outfits. He figures he can do the same here. And he’s never minded showing skin.

God. Is there anything he _doesn’t_ look good in?

He definitely looks good in snakeskin. He _absolutely_ looks good in velvet. Mesh goes without saying. Damn. Sometimes, it’s very good to be Sasha.

The only question now is what to pick. It’s all good. Is any of it _right?_

He’s trying to decide if it’s worth trying on tights when there’s a soft knock on the frame of his open door.

Madison’s standing there with a pair of boots in his hand and a look on his face like he’s trying very hard not to laugh.

“Hey, no laughing at captain,” Sasha says with a grin.

“No, no,” Madison says, absolutely failing. “It’s a great skirt. I just think maybe you should go with briefs instead of boxers underneath.”

Sasha gives him a look. “Was going to skip underwear for the night, but OK, is your party.” He looks at the boots in Madison’s hands. “You brought me a present?”

“Yeah,” Madison says. “I think they might fit you, and they’re not too tall.” He eyes the tights in Sasha’s hands. “Thinking about fishnets?”

Sasha squints at him. “You are going to say is too much.”

Madison laughs again, wandering over toward the bed and picking through the clothes left with the boots under his arms. “No such thing in drag.”

This is the best. “Bowey. Yes,” Sasha says, tickled. Madison hums and pulls something strappy and black out of the pile.

“Try this under the top,” he says, passing it to Sasha. “The mesh will look cool with something underneath.”

Sasha shucks the pink shirt and pulls the black one over his head. It’s not quite a shirt, more like the top half of a tank top, and he gets tangled in it for a second before Madison helps him. Then the pink shirt back overtop.

“Bowey. You are genius,” Sasha says, grinning at the mirror. Madison smiles over his shoulder.

“No problem,” he says. “You know the ball doesn’t start for like six hours, right?”

 

* * *

 

There’s a lot to get done. Sasha feels better for figuring out what he’s wearing early. He changes back into basketball shorts and spends the next few hours in a blur. Clearing out the last of the crap in the basement. Making sure they have enough cups. Consulting with Mary as she sets up a photobooth in the backyard. Making it clear to every member of his team on Moose’s behalf that “if you touch AUX cord, Julio will kill you.”

He hasn’t even met Julio yet. Sounds fun, though.

He sees Backy, of course, because Backy does fucking live there, after all, and it’s not like he wouldn’t help with set-up. Sasha just always sees him from the other side of the room. Somehow Backy is always in the middle of leaving the room to do something else when Sasha comes in. Sasha doesn’t want to stand in the way of Jello shots getting made. He doesn’t even know what he wants to say. But when he sees Backy, he looks at him.

Ninety minutes before the start time, the whole team is in the house, along with all of TSS. Some folks are getting changed, some are attempting make-up, some are falling on the mercy of TSS members for help. Mary has promised Sasha ten minutes of her time, and he has promised her access to the secret non-shitty liquor. For now, he sprawls on the couch and watches. This will be a good memory.

Madison is leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the room. His face looks a little bit like Sasha feels. Sasha catches his eye and jerks his head, motioning him over.

“You want say something?” Sasha says, nodding at the buzzing crush of people. Soon there will be drinks, and soon the lights will go down, and soon strangers will be here.

Madison takes a deep breath, and properly thinks about it, which will never stop impressing Sasha. “Yeah,” he says, “Wanna help me out?”

Sasha would be delighted. _“Hey!”_ He uses his Captain Voice, and goddamn but if that doesn’t still work. “Everybody come listen to Bowey,” he says, voice still carrying, and folks drop what they’re doing and crowd into the living room.

There’s Backy, again, at the edge of things. He’s ripped open a 30-rack and is passing out cans of beer. Sasha has the best A in the world.

V presses a can into Bowey’s hand, and Bowey cracks it. “Hey, everybody,” he says, holding it aloft. “You all, uh. You didn’t have to do this.” He looks around the room. “But you did. And that’s pretty sweet.” A mild cheer goes up around the room. “Tonight should be fun. Nobody break an ankle.” A louder cheer now, including from Cole, who’s leaning in the kitchen doorway in a silver wig. “Cheers,” Madison says, and the room lifts their drinks as one. “Let’s make some fucking money!”

 

* * *

 

Sasha doesn’t spend too much time by the door once the ball gets started in earnest, but he’s pretty sure they’re making plenty of money. College kids aren’t always flush with cash, but most of them have the $5 cover charge, and Sasha sees some folks press tens and even twenties into the coffee cans that Whip and Latts have with them at the door. Latts looks really good as a blonde. Sasha would pay extra to see that too.

The main bar and dance floor is in the living room, loud and sweaty and gross as any other party they’ve had in the house. The majority of people so far are in some kind of drag, even if its amateurish, and Sasha has already seen one hook-up get interrupted because one half was in lace and the other was in sequins. They got stuck. That has never happened in the house before.

The real action is in the basement, where TSS is holding court with a playlist of their own and dancing that Sasha knows better than to try to keep up with. Madison’s down there, of course, and Sasha thinks V is with him. The only other person from the team he saw when he stuck his head in was Braden, but Braden’s got the flexibility for it. Hot yoga goalie nonsense.

The marching band has shown up beyond Sasha’s wildest dreams. The Jello shots are gone within an hour. Sasha pours a drink for a very handsome stranger in a waistcoat before realizing he had hooked up with her at Homecoming sophomore year.

“That’s good look for you,” he shouts over the music. They’re pressed back in a corner by the drinks table. Sasha’s ears have been ringing for twenty minutes. This is going great.

She presses a thumb to his lips, and he grins. “You too,” she says, leaning up into his space just a little.

He tugs on her tie. “Have a good time tonight. Thanks for coming.” She winks, finishes her drink, and disappears into the crowd.

Sasha hasn’t had anything to drink since the team finished pregaming, but he still throws himself into dancing. The boots are good, only a little awkward to dance in. In fairness, Sasha’s dancing is mostly just jumping up and down and whipping his hair around, and that doesn’t require too much finesse.

Doing it in a skirt is a little different. But Sasha doesn’t give up easy.

Burky finds him in the crowd at some point, with carefully-applied fake stubble and shiny red lips, and they waste a few songs behaving scandalously before Burky swans off to take pictures in the backyard. Kuzya and Osh are having some sort of horrendous dance-off in the corner. A girl from Sasha’s French class is doing the robot in head-to-toe leopard print. His freshman year roommate is making out with someone in a ballgown. He sees his friend in the waistcoat again, but she seems to have fully captured Mary’s attentions, so Sasha figures she doesn’t need any additional entertainment.

Most of the other people here he doesn’t recognize—whether he’s met them or not. Sasha wants to dance with them all, tonight.

He gets through a pretty good number.

His feet start to hurt as midnight approaches, and he stumbles out of the crowd and toward the back door in search of fresh air and maybe a place to sit down before he rallies. Damn. How does anybody wear shoes like this every weekend? He leans against the wall and unzips the boots, leaving them in a pile and wiggling his freed toes before heading outside.

He pauses in the doorway. Fresh air might not be as easy to come by as he thought, as the porch has been taken over by the smokers. Cole is among them, cigarette in one hand and heels dangling from the other. He’s laughing at something the drum major is saying. Sasha is about to start chirping him for his unhealthy habits when an itch at the corner of his eye makes him look away.

At the far end of the porch, T.J. and Kuzya look to be continuing whatever friendly disagreement they’d attempted to solve through the power of dance. Snarls is ignoring them, sitting in the lap of a beautiful brunette on the couch. Greenie is perched on the porch railing, red dress riding up as he officiates the argument with a drink in his hand. And Backy is leaning next to him, dressed in gold, looking at Sasha.

There must be fifteen people in between them, but Sasha’s eyes eat him up anyway. Sasha bought that dress. Sasha hopes Backy likes it.

It’s hard to tell, even with the string lights Sasha had hung up on the porch, but he’s pretty sure that lipstick is purple, not pink.

Sasha sways on his feet, grabs the doorframe.

Sasha wants everything.

If he’d ever thought about it, he wouldn’t have thought it would feel like this. No fear. No suffocating hopelessness. Sasha wants, clean and clear, and it doesn’t feel like anything will be ruined for it.

Ruined. Sasha is an idiot.

Backy, because he’s the best person in the world and Sasha’s perfect A, pushes away from the porch railing and starts picking his way through the crowd. It’s not until he starts moving that Sasha notices the stockings on his legs, or the plain black heels at the end of them. Backy moves carefully through the crowd. He always does.

Sasha holds his breath as Backy makes it to him, real and shimmering, but Backy just puts his hand out and lightly turns Sasha to the side like a swinging door and walks past him without a word.

Sasha’s not that much of an idiot. He follows, weaving through the crowd like they’re not even there.

Backy and Greenie’s room is on the first floor hallway. Backy climbs the stairs instead, planting each foot carefully and holding onto the banister. He’s very good at this. Is he a natural, like V? Or closer to Braden?

There’s nowhere else he could reasonably be going, but Sasha’s heart still thuds in his ears when Backy opens the door to Sasha’s room. Backy doesn’t close the door in Sasha’s face, but based on his expression, it’s a near thing.

Under the overhead lights in Sasha’s room, it’s easier to see the little faultlines, the smudges in Backy’s lipstick, the stray curl sprung free from the pins. Sasha wants to touch them all. One of Backy’s heels wobbles underneath him. Sasha closes the door behind himself and leans back against it.

“What do you want,” Backy says, flat and strained and exhausted. Sasha would do anything for him.

“Backy,” he says. He doesn’t have the words for it yet, this thing at the center of his life he has not been looking at, so he tries to just do it by sound.

Backy’s mouth twists and his fists clench. “You’re drunk,” he says, shifting his weight.

Sasha shakes his head and presses his hands flat against the door. “Stopped, two hours, maybe three,” he says. His ears are ringing from the music and his voice is shot from singing along, but he’s sober. “Are you?”

Backy doesn’t answer, though Sasha doesn’t think he’s imagining the way the set of his eyes changes just a little. “What do you _want,_ ” he says again, despairing, and Sasha still doesn’t have words, but he’s sorry, he’s so sorry.

He holds an arm out, palm up and fingers curled, because that’s what he wants. Backy is trying so hard to shutter his face. Sasha can see him doing it. “Backy,” he says again, tongue clumsy. He hates fucking English. “Nicky, please, baby,” he says, and it’s not what he planned on saying, not at all, but it’s enough, and Nicky catches his wrist as he steps in close.

Oh, God, with the shoes on he’s taller than Sasha. Just barely. Just enough to notice as Sasha gathers him in by the armful, as he buries his nose in Nicky’s neck.

“Shit,” Nicky says, almost a whisper, and Sasha hears the thunk as Nicky braces an arm by his head. Sasha pulls him in tight, feeling the muscles of his back shift under the sequins of the dress. He takes deep breaths, trying to keep it together as Nicky’s other hand slides and shakes on the bare skin of the small of his back. Nicky smells peculiar, an unfamiliar paint-and-shampoo smell, and it takes a moment for Sasha to realize it must be the makeup.

Sasha should open his eyes at some point. He’s working up to it.

“Fuck,” Nicky says, still quiet. “You’re really into this, huh?”

That slaps Sasha awake. He lifts his head, letting it rest back against the door. God, Nicky’s right there, inches away and avoiding Sasha’s eyes. “‘This’?” Sasha repeats.

Nicky shrugs, and it makes all the sequins shift at once with a soft sound. Sasha’s hands find his shoulders, feeling the solid weight of him underneath. Nicky still won’t look at him, every movement of his eyes telegraphed by the flick of his darkened eyelashes.

Does he—how much has Sasha failed, that Nicky thinks he’s in love with a _dress?_

“No,” Sasha says, frantic, cupping at Nicky’s jaw. Nicky’s eyes snap up at that, then slide away again. “No.” Sasha paws clumsily at Nicky’s hair with his other hand, running his fingers behind Nicky’s ear until pins ping free and hit the floor.

Nicky is still touching him, at least, hand pressed against Sasha’s back. Sasha is grateful for that.

“Nicky,” Sasha says, pushing up off the door and as close into Nicky’s space as he dares, their clothes brushing together. He traces his thumbs over the shells of Nicky’s ears. Nicky’s mouth falls ever so slightly open, and Sasha lets himself hope.

“This is—everything is so beautiful,” he says, because it’s true. “But is not—” he swallows thickly. “Is just a reason.” He leans back just a touch so he can see Nicky’s whole face at once. Nicky finally meets his gaze, green and guarded. “To look so much as I want to.” Sasha doesn’t have the words. He’s never had this conversation before, not even with himself. “So much. All the time. Nobody else,” he says, and cards his fingers mindlessly through Nicky’s hair again, ruining it.

“Alex,” Nicky breathes, and his face is going pink. His fingers dig into Sasha’s lower back just slightly.

Sasha cups his hands on the nape of Nicky’s neck. “You like it?” he asks. Nicky’s neck twists away under his hands, just a little. “When I look at you?” He can feel the top of the dress with the tips of his fingers, the place where Nicky’s back is too broad for it to zip up all the way. “You want me to?”

“Fuck,” Nicky says, with a sound that’s almost a laugh, voice in pieces. He shakes his head. “Fuck. Yes,” he says, and Sasha’s back hits the door, and Nicky tips his head and kisses him.

Sasha’s knees go out from under him; only Nicky pressed against his chest keeps him on his feet.

There’s a phantom waxiness on Nicky’s lips that shifts a little as Sasha kisses him back. It’s nothing like kissing a girl. It’s like kissing Nicky again, Sasha gets to kiss _Nicky_ again, he gets more than the fragmented memories he had put away for fear of wearing them thin. He gets Nicky’s clever fingers back on his neck. He gets Nicky’s hair back in his face. He gets, oh, _God,_ Nicky’s thick thigh pressed in between Sasha’s, and that’s what gets Sasha to stop sucking on Nicky’s lower lip so he can gasp and curse like that deserves.

Nicky mouths at Sasha’s jaw and digs his fingers into Sasha’s waist hard enough to hurt, and all Sasha can do to retaliate is rock down against his leg, skirt riding up as he looks for the right angle. Well, that and pull on Nicky’s hair. Lightly, first, and then hard when Nicky moans into his neck. The way he sounds—

Sasha can hear the muffled thrum of the music downstairs. He hopes it keeps going. He wants to see how loud Nicky can get, if Nicky will let him.

“You want,” he says, scratching blunt nails over Nicky’s scalp and breathing through the mark Nicky is leaving on him, “You want, can stop.” Nicky doesn’t stop, sharp teeth digging in and lighting Sasha up. “Show you, is not this,” Sasha continues, fisting a hand in Nicky’s dress. “If you want.”

Nicky pulls back then, and Sasha can’t help but snap his hips forward again needily. Nicky’s fucking face. His mouth is a wreck, half his lipstick dragged down his chin. Sasha’s sure the other half is on his throat. Nicky’s skin glows, flushed and sweaty. His hair hangs in his face.

He presses his forehead to Sasha’s. “Fuck no.”

Sasha makes a strangled noise and kisses him, messy and reckless. “Thank God,” he says, mumbling against Nicky’s mouth and then gasping when Nicky bends to bite down on his neck again. “I want—please,” Sasha babbles, dropping his head back against the door. He might not get another shot at this. “Please, let me try again, will, shit, will do better, I will make it better, please, Nicky.”

Nicky laughs a little, but he also presses his hard dick against Sasha’s thigh through his dress. Oh, that’s a feeling Sasha will remember forever. “You want to suck my dick so bad?”

Let Nicky chirp him as much as he wants. “I want that,” Sasha says, grabbing at Nicky’s ass. “I wanna suck your dick so bad,” and Nicky may be taller right now, but Sasha is still stronger, and when Nicky shivers in his arms it’s easy for Sasha to grab him by the wrists and back him up against Sasha’s desk. All of Sasha’s international relations reading for the week falls to the floor. Oh well.

“Think about it all the time,” he says, watching Nicky’s face. He’s rewarded; Nicky swallows, breathes heavily. It’s not quite true—Sasha hasn’t _thought_ about it, exactly. More like it ambushes him constantly, the sense memory hitting him out of nowhere: the blunt pressure on his lips, the weight on his tongue. Sasha doesn’t think about it. It finds him anyway. “All the time.”

“Nobody’s—” Nicky swallows again. “Nobody’s fucking stopping you,” he says, and Sasha grins at him, this mean perfect son of a bitch with Sasha’s lipgloss all over his cheek. God. Sasha’s mouth is watering.

Sasha drops to his knees, shoulders Nicky’s legs apart, and slides his dress up to his waist, and then’s when Sasha learns the worst thing in the world.

Nicky’s stockings stop at the thighs.

“Fuck, Nicky, fuck me,” Sasha says, choking on it a little bit. He’s fucking wet in his underwear, he can feel it, so hard it hurts. He slides his fingers over the bands of the stockings.

“You’re a, a fucking liar, you’re absolutely into this,” Nicky says. Sasha ignores him. He presses his face mindlessly into Nicky’s inner thigh, mouthing at where the band digs into Nicky’s skin. Nicky slides a hand into Sasha’s hair, and Sasha takes a deep breath. He can smell Nicky, heady and hard.

Sasha slips his fingertips under the band and rolls it down. The skin underneath is pink and angry. Sasha has to put his mouth on it. It’s of, fucking, what is it, geopolitical importance that Sasha kiss him there, that Sasha sucks on that livid stripe.

“Jesus Christ, Alex,” Nicky says, tightening his grip on Sasha’s hair. Sasha slides a hand up to palm his hard dick through his briefs, and when Nicky sighs in relief Sasha bites down.

The sound Nicky makes is fucking perfection. Sasha takes mercy on him.

Sasha hikes Nicky’s dress up as high as he can, resting the excess out of the way on the desk, and puts his mouth on the wet spot soaking through Nicky’s briefs. His eyes fall shut without thinking, but they fly open again when Nicky tugs on his hair.

“Stalling,” Nicky says, his voice breaking. Sasha grins up at him, and Nicky lets go of his hair to run a few fingers gracelessly down Sasha’s nose, over his mouth. Sasha nuzzles into them. He pulls Nicky’s briefs down his thighs, and he’d been thinking about continuing to take it slow, but the second the shining pink head of Nicky’s dick is free Sasha gets his mouth on it.

Nicky groans, hand back white-knuckling in Sasha’s hair.

Sasha groans louder.

Fucking _shit_ , Jesus Christ and hell itself, Sasha loves to suck cock. The firm smoothness of the head against his tongue, the velvety slide of skin. Oh, God. The way Nicky tastes, the smell of him, a little familiar and a little new. Sasha loves to have his eyes closed and his mouth full, everything full of Nicky.

Sasha pulls off, wet and messy already, then slides a tight fist down Nicky’s length and chases it with his mouth again. And again, and again. The sounds Nicky makes, the helpless little pumps of his hips, the way Sasha’s mouth is filled up over and over. The filthy soft-hard slide over his lips.

Fuck, fucking hell, Sasha’s a cocksucker. He may not know much, but he knows that, he’s a cocksucker and he wants to be the best, wants to stay here on his knees until Nicky sobs, wants to learn how to take it until Nicky can slide all the way down his throat, easy, and Sasha can just look up at him in bliss. Sasha’s feels like he’s melting, like he’s got a warm bath where his brain used to be and a hard dick in the place of a personality. He wants to buy a gold chain that says _cocksucker_ in all caps, wants to put diamonds on it when he gets NHL money, wants Nicky to yank on it when Sasha sucks his cock, which should be every fucking day.

Sasha can’t imagine opening his eyes. He’s overstimulated as it is, taste and touch dialed up so high he can feel every hair stand on end. He can still hear, though. He can hear the beautiful, awful, hungry sounds his mouth and hand make, and he can hear the rattle of Nicky’s shoes sliding for purchase on the floor, and he can hear Nicky.

Most of it’s in Swedish, which Sasha doesn’t speak, but it sounds good anyway.

Sasha gets overconfident and chokes a little. He has to pull off to catch his breath, but it gives him an opportunity to look up at Nicky.

Nicky looks like a fucking wreck. Sasha loves this.

“I love this,” he says, because why shouldn’t he? He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and Nicky doubles over like he’s been punched, cupping the back of Sasha’s skull. “I love to do this with you,” Sasha says, voice shredded, and ten seconds after that Nicky comes down his throat.

Sasha swallows through it and holds Nicky steady by the softness at his waist. He kisses him clean, and he echoes the little kitten noises Nicky makes as he comes down. He doesn’t really want to stop, though, so after a while he just turns his attention back to Nicky’s thighs. He’s got his second stocking rolled partially down and is working on a little hickey there when Nicky comes back to himself and tugs at Sasha’s hair. “Off.”

Sasha rasps his cheek against the stocking, and then flicks his eyes up. “Better?” he says. “This time?” He grins.

Nicky gives a breathless sort of laugh and nudges Sasha away with a knee. “You’re fucking—yeah, getting there, Alex, Jesus.” His limbs look liquid. Sasha’s honestly not sure he’s gonna be able to stand.

Sasha’s the fucking king.

“Give me a minute,” Nicky says, because Sasha’s not hard to read. “Get—fuck, get on the bed.”

Sasha’s dick throbs, pissed off at being ignored. Sasha gets to his feet creakily, his knees pretty pissed off too. It’s ridiculous, but he walks backwards across the room, keeping his eyes on Nicky until his legs hit the back of the bed.

The music downstairs is still going. Sasha has no idea what time it is. Who the fuck cares. Sasha doesn’t think the door is even locked.

Nicky stares him down, chest heaving. He scrubs a hand through his hair. “Take the skirt off,” he says. Sasha does, happily, unzipping the black snakeskin and letting it slide down his legs. He sits down on the bed and shoves the leftover pile of clothing off onto the floor. Thank God this room comes with a queen. Captain’s privilege.

Sasha palms his own dick through his underwear and stockings. “You coming, or want me to take care?” he says, and Nicky rolls his eyes at the goad, but it still works.

Sasha loves arguing with Nicky. He loves when Nicky gets the bit between his teeth. He loves beating him and losing to him. Sasha is so fucked from here on out.

Nicky kicks his shoes off, finally, and stands up with a wince. He reaches awkwardly to unzip the dress a little further and then lets it drop to the floor. He steps out of it and his underwear and bends to the stockings.

“Please—” Sasha says, and he shouldn’t hand the man more ammunition, but he can’t help himself.

Nicke looks at him, long and low, like some great pleased jungle cat. “You like this,” he says, straightening up and stalking across the room. He’s still gold, all the way down.

“You do, too, I think,” Sasha says, watching him come, bracing for impact.

“Yeah, I’m not fucking stupid,” Nicky says, and tackles Sasha to the bed.

Sasha is happy to be pinned.

Nicky hovers over him just a moment, between Sasha’s legs with his hair hanging down. Sasha reaches up to tug on a lank curl, and Nicky’s eyes close for just a second. “Nicky,” Sasha says, not meaning anything in particular. Just saying it.

Nicky opens his eyes, narrows them, and then bends down swiftly to give Sasha a brutal, closed-mouth kiss. He pulls back immediately and inspects Sasha’s face as Sasha catches his breath. Then he does it again, a rough press of lips that would be too blunt and simple to be sexy if Sasha’s brain weren’t fucking broken.

“Nicky,” he says, and Nicky sits back between his thighs and tucks his hair behind his ear. Sasha’s so hard he’s probably going to die.

“Not Backy anymore?” Nicky says, eyes slitted and and his mouth in an alarming half-smile. His knuckles run up and down the back of one of Sasha’s thighs.

Sasha takes deep breaths and tries to think. “I don’t—what?”

“I’m the same person,” Nicky says. His thumb massages into Sasha’s hamstring just a little. He’s not touching Sasha anywhere other than that.

“I know,” Sasha says, sitting up on his elbows. He knows. There’s only one. Sasha couldn’t call him anything that would move him an inch.

“I’m not different,” Nicky says. “It’s important.” Nicky. Backy. _Backy, baby,_ how many times has Sasha called him that? On his knees, every time.

“I know.” Sasha presses a knee in against Nicky’s side. “I just. Want to say it.” It feels nice, and Sasha wants everything.

Nicky slides both his hands up and down Sasha’s thighs and leans forward just a little bit. “You wake up tomorrow,” he says, voice soft and even, “And want somebody else—”

“—never,—”

“—I will quit,” Nicky says, still half-smiling, “I’ll do it, Alex, I’ll join the, the fucking golf team, I honestly will.”

He could fucking try. “I’d join too, follow you,” Sasha says, holding his gaze.

Nicky snorts and squeezes. “You’re fucking terrible at golf,” he says, and Sasha needs to get his hands on him. “They wouldn’t let you.”

“I would learn,” Sasha says. He twists his fingers in the bedsheets. He tries his best to wait. Nicky has to decide. “I can learn.”

Nicky considers him a moment. Sasha doesn’t look away. The music downstairs is still going.

Nicky slides his hands up to Sasha’s hips. “OK,” he says, and Sasha’s so happy he could cry. “Then you can call me whatever you want,” Nicky continues, and he slips his fingers through Sasha’s fishnets and fucking rips them open.

“Backy, holy _shit_ ,” Sasha says, and Nicky is already pulling his underwear and the ruined stockings down his thighs.

“There it is,” Nicky says absently, pulling them the rest of the way off.

“Fucking, drama queen, _shit_ —” Sasha says, and then he stops, because Nicky’s leaned over him again and he’s got a hand on Sasha’s bare dick. “Fuck, thank you, please,” Sasha breathes. He’s gonna come just from this, just from the meanest handjob of all time. He’ll take it.

“Talk a lot,” Nicky says, sounding distracted, and reaches out to run his fingers over Sasha’s open mouth. Sasha just opens it a little more, grinding up against Nicky’s other hand. Two of Nicky’s fingers slip into Sasha’s mouth, and he sucks down on them and sighs. Nicky inhales sharply and rubs down against Sasha’s tongue. “You’ll have—have to wait for it, a little,” he says.

Sasha can feel him, not even half-hard again yet against Sasha’s hip. Still. Sasha gets to do it _again_.

“Fuck, you really like it,” Nicky mumbles, sliding his fingers out of Sasha’s mouth. He leans down on his elbow to kiss Sasha again, different this time, though still not taking Sasha’s mouth the way Sasha would let him. Sasha reaches up to get a hand on the back of his neck, keeping him close while Sasha rocks into his hand. “More than me, even,” Nicky mumbles.

Fuck.

It makes sense.

Of course Nicky would figure it out first. Of course he’d face it, and tell nobody, and find some private, sensible way to handle things.

It makes sense.

Sasha thinks about Backy, with his pink cheeks and stupid fucking backwards hats, on his knees in some house party bathroom, and Sasha feels like a goddamn idiot and absolutely, blindingly turned on.

“Jesus,” Sasha says, and rolling Nicky over onto his back feels like nothing. “Jesus Christ,” he says, and Nicky makes an affronted noise but still opens his mouth up eagerly for Sasha’s tongue.

Oh, God, there’s so much of Nicky for Sasha to touch. He can’t help but grab handfuls of him, and he pulls back just to see the fleeting marks his hands leave on Nicky’s pale-pink skin. He rips his shirts, the last thing on him, over his head. Pressing his bare chest against Nicky’s is sticky, sweaty bliss.

“Fuck,” Nicky says, “I was gonna—”

“Want you here,” Sasha says. Nicky just barely fits under him, curls fanned across Sasha’s sheets like the best thing Sasha has ever seen. He works his hips helplessly. “Gonna—gonna come in ten seconds anyway, don’t matter.”

Nicky wrinkles his nose and laughs, as if Sasha can’t feel him getting harder. “Lovely.”

“Yeah,” Sasha says, pushing the sweaty hair off Nicky’s forehead. “Gonna fucking—gonna come just looking at you.” Ha. Nicky shouldn’t tell Sasha things if he doesn’t want him to use them.

Nicky digs his fingernails into Sasha’s back. “What do you—do you have anything,” he says, breathing hard, and Sasha nearly catches him with an elbow flopping over to scrabble open his bedside table. He has something, and Nicky snatches the bottle from him and spills half of it into his open hand. The angle is awkward and Nicky spills lube over half of his own torso, but that just makes it even better when Sasha gets to thrust into the tight wet circle of Nicky’s hand.

Sasha groans and drops his forehead to Nicky’s shoulder, grabbing for a handful of Nicky’s hair just to have something to hold on to. Nicky hisses and tightens his grip. He’s so good to get on top of. His deft hands so sweet, his solid muscles so steady. Sasha wants to rub up against him forever. He wants to keep him sticky and slick. He wants to come all over him.

Nicky’s hard again. Sasha can feel it, and he can hear it, hurt little sounds falling from Nicky’s mouth when Sasha’s dick slides against his. Sasha props himself up and gets a hand between them, finds Nicky’s fingers and wraps them around Nicky’s dick, too, and fuck, that’s perfect, that’s so perfect.

“Yes, baby,” Sasha breathes, because Nicky said he could call him anything, and Sasha’s too close to be blamed for it, and Nicky’s too far gone again to punish him too much. His head is thrown back against the sheets, strong column of his neck laid open. “So good.” Sasha will give him whatever he wants to make him look like that. Anything, anything Sasha has, anything worth anything. “You want—you want me to fuck you?” Nicky’s eyes flutter closed, and Sasha can see the pointed tip of his tongue pressed against his lower lip. Yes. Sasha drags his hips as filthy as he can manage. “Give you all of my dick?” Backy catches his breath enough to laugh a little, and good, he should, but Sasha isn’t fooled, and he doesn’t miss the little arch in Nicky’s back. “I make it good, give it how you like it,” he continues, heart racing. He couldn’t stop pumping into Nicky’s hand now with a gun to his head. “Make it good for for you. Anything. Anything you want.”

Nicky’s eyes peel open with effort. “All of it,” he says, and Sasha chokes and spills all over NIcky’s hand, his dick, his stomach.

Oh, fuck.

Sasha’s limbs feel like jelly. His ears are ringing. But Sasha knows how to make his body do what he wants.

Nicky’s saying something. That’s nice. Sasha levers himself up on shaking arms and slides just far enough down Nicky’s shuddering body to get his cock in his mouth.

Sasha doesn’t have much technique left, but he thinks he gets points for effort. There’s a clinical plastic-y taste from the lube, and a sourness that must be Sasha himself, but those melt away quickly as Nicky rolls his hips selfishly into Sasha’s mouth, hand on the back of his head.

Sasha drools, and chokes, and covets.

“I’m going—can I, I’m gonna—” Nicky says, voice ruined. On the list of things Nicky might want to do to Sasha, coming in his mouth doesn’t even rank on the _requires permission_ list, but Sasha groans anyway, swallowing it down for the second time. A personal best. He intends to improve.

Sasha holds Nicky carefully in his mouth as he goes soft, eventually letting him slip out. Nicky’s taking deep breaths but not quite up to speaking, just running gentle, searching touches over Sasha’s face. Feels good.

Sasha rests his head against one of Nicky’s thighs. There’s nothing staining Nicky’s stockings that isn’t already on Sasha’s face, anyway. And his thigh is so comfortable. Such a good pillow. Nicky’s so good.

Sasha’s just gonna. Rest for a second.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up once in the middle of the night. The ball is done, or at least wound down enough that Sasha can’t hear the music anymore. Sasha wakes up with his face against Nicky’s stomach, arm thrown across his legs. All the lights are still on.

Nicky’s got pillow creases all over his face. He’s got his own hair in his mouth. He almost looks young, like this, when he isn’t having to tell Sasha what to do.

Sasha gets up to go turn the overhead lights off and lock the door, and then he crawls carefully back into the same position on the bed, curled up against Nicky like he never left at all.

 

* * *

 

The next time Sasha wakes up, Nicky is sitting with his legs hanging over the side of the bed, peeling off the stockings. Light shines in through Sasha’s windows. Birds are chirping. God. Fuck birds.

Sasha reaches out to bump Nicky’s hip with his knuckles. Nicky starts, but only a little. “Don’t go,” Sasha says, mouth still half full of pillow.

Nicky doesn’t turn for a moment, staring at nothing in Sasha’s room. Sasha leaves his hand where it is, pressing gently.

“OK,” Nicky says, and Sasha smiles.

“Don’t even have to say please,” he teases, “So easy,” and then he yelps when Backy rolls his eyes and cracks a palm down sharply on Sasha’s bare ass.

That leads to Sasha’s foot in Nicky’s face, and Nicky’s fingers in Sasha’s ticklish ribs, and finally with both of them on their sides, Nicky crowded up against the wall.

Sasha gets his fingers in Nicky’s hair again, which hasn’t gotten old so far. Nor has getting his thigh in between Nicky’s. “Look like hell,” he says. It’s true. Nicky still has some stray bits of purple caked in the creases of his lips, and whatever used to be on his eyes has now run mostly down his cheeks.

“You look the same,” Backy deadpans, and when Sasha makes an outraged face his nose wrinkles and he gives up a real grin. “Was going to go shower.”

They have practice in the afternoon. They’ll both have to shower eventually. Eventually. “Can’t go like this,” Sasha says. It’s a chirp. It’s also true—nobody else gets to see this. “Stay there,” Sasha says, and rolls with effort out of bed.

It takes some digging through the discarded piles of clothes on the floor, and Nicky nearly tips him over with a calculated foot to the ass as Sasha is bent over searching, but finally he comes up with the pink plastic package Mary had left with him.

He hadn’t used them before bed like she told him to, but he thinks she would forgive him.

Sasha lies back down flat on the bed and, after a little fumbling, gets the package open and pulls out a wipe. “Face,” he says. Backy hesitates just a moment, short enough that someone who doesn’t know his reflexes might miss it entirely, and then props himself up on his elbow within reach.

It takes a minute for Sasha to get a hang of it. Does he dab at it, or scrub, or what? But it turns out the right thing is what comes most naturally, just carefully running the wipe over Nicky’s face with a hand cupped under his jaw to keep him steady. He remembers how Mary had touched his face and tries to do the same. It’s scary to touch Backy’s eyelids. He’s never done that before. He doesn’t want to hurt him.

Nicky keeps his face still and his eyes closed until Sasha moves to take off the last of the lipstick. He opens his eyes, then, and watches Sasha work.

Sasha tries to do a good job. He even runs the wipe down Nicky’s neck, chasing the black and silver traces Sasha left there.

When he’s done, the wipe is five different colors and Nicky’s face is pink and a little wet. “Pretty,” Sasha says, taking another wipe out of the package and going to work on Nicky’s chest and stomach. He doesn’t think the wipes are meant for this, chipping away at the crust of a morning after, but they seem to do OK. Nicky shivers at the cold touch and laughs a little, shifting to give Sasha access.

Sasha wipes at his belly intently. He doesn’t know how Backy does it, how he wears his softness on the outside like an obvious red herring to be discounted. It works. It works really well. Sasha sits up. He takes another wipe out, and ignores Backy’s interested dick for now to concern himself with the streaky mess on one of Backy’s thighs. The mess wipes away cleanly; Sasha’s bitemarks from last night aren’t going anywhere.

“Pretty,” Sasha says again.

“Alex,” Nicky says, almost reproachful. He still opens his thighs up. Just a little. Just enough to let Sasha make him respectable again. Sasha finishes his work before he looks up at Nicky’s face, still a little shiny.

Sasha sits, bare-ass naked on his own bed, still covered with all of last night. “Pretty,” he says, and shrugs when Backy gives him a look. Sasha doesn’t always have the words. Sasha still knows what he knows. “Not a joke.”

He sits, and he waits, but he can admit that he starts to smile before Nicky quite manages to sit up in bed and fit their mouths together for a kiss.

Nicky tastes fucking terrible, sleep and beer and the chemical sting of the wipes. Sasha wants it to go on forever.

Nicky kisses Sasha likes he tastes amazing.

Sasha breaks for air. “Don’t go,” he says. Backy presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Please.”

Backy hums and rubs his sharp nose against Sasha’s cheek. “Not yet,” he says.

“Not yet,” Sasha repeats, and pulls Backy closer. “OK.” It’s enough. Sasha did good.

 

* * *

 

In the second afterglow, Nicky bites Sasha absently on the shoulder and then digs his chin in. “Bowey and V are together,” he says.

Sasha kicks back lightly, finding Nicky’s ankle. “Swedish pillow talk is weird,” he says, and Nicky bites him again. “Yeah, I know, no shit.”

He feels Nicky thunk his forehead against the top of Sasha’s spine. “Do we need to do anything about it?”

Sasha makes a face at the wall and then rolls over to face him. “We could have meeting,” he says, mock serious. “You want to take notes?” Nicky giggles and flushes. Sasha tangles their legs together. “Two players together, very important, captain should talk to his A about it,” Sasha says, grabbing at Nicky’s ass. “What do you think, we should tell Coach?” he says, and then Nicky tries to murder him with his own pillow.

 

* * *

 

Sasha has to bite down on the pillow to keep from screaming the house down when Backy makes him come with two fingers inside him and his cock down his throat, so it all works out for the best.

 

* * *

 

Christ, they both need to shower. It’s fucked up that Sasha has to share a bathroom, as captain. It’s fucked up that he can’t shower with Nicky. When Sasha has NHL money he’s gonna have his own house, with a master suite and an ensuite bathroom just for fucking Nicky in.

Sasha has to start writing this shit down.

 

* * *

 

They really need to get out of bed in ten minutes. Sasha has done the math.

“Nobody else gets to suck your dick,” he says, pressing his face into Backy’s stomach and feeling him laugh. “Not even Greenie.”

Backy strokes a hand over Sasha’s head. “He’ll be disappointed, but he’ll understand.”

Sasha turns his face to the side and looks out into his room. “He know?”

Backy makes an annoyed sound and tugs on Sasha’s hair. “Thinks he knows everything.”

Sasha snorts. Sounds right. “Is OK, that way he not confused,” he says. “Not wonder where you sleep.”

Backy tugs harder. “I’ll sleep wherever I want.”

“That’s what I say,” Sasha says, and snickers when Backy flicks him in the ear. “So mean. Love you mean, too, you know, is not going to work.”

With Sasha’s head on his torso it’s easy to tell when Backy stops breathing.

What? Sasha’s said it a hundred times. It’s not less true now that Sasha’s a little less stupid.

“Going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Backy says, clipped but not cold. Sasha can’t see him from this angle, but he can imagine his face.

Sasha does his best to shrug. “OK. But just will say again tomorrow.”

There’s a pause. Sasha can hear the sounds of the house waking up, the shower down the hall coming on, somebody rattling around loudly in the kitchen.

Backy’s hand comes back to rest on the nape of Sasha’s neck. “OK,” Backy says. “Try that.”

 

* * *

 

Nicky slips out in borrowed sweats, and Sasha takes a three-minute shower in the upstairs bathroom with absolutely no hot water left, and if anybody on the team notices anything amiss, they don’t show it. Sasha think he might actually be in better shape than most of them. He’s only exhausted; Burky’s so hungover he keeps one eye closed until they get to the rink.

Greenie pointedly eyeballs the hickey on Sasha’s neck in the locker room and gives him a shit-eating grin, but he’d probably do that anyway. Sasha doesn’t mind.

Sasha gives Greenie a good flattening against the boards during warm-ups. He’d do that anyway, too.

When Djoos has to make a break for the bench and ends up puking his guts out in a trash can, Sasha laughs with everybody else, but he also watches Nicky laugh, smiling with all his teeth and chirping in Swedish. Sasha would have done that anyway. He might not have kept watching until Nicky had sensed him and given him a fiery look. That’s a good new trick. Sasha chews happily on his mouthguard and grins as Nicky spits.

Maybe it’s just because he feels less like throwing up than everybody else on the ice, but Sasha doesn’t think skating has ever felt easier.

Shooting feels easy, too. He absolutely lights up the shooting drill that Coach runs them through, pucks going exactly where he wants them, or at very least pinging off the posts. Sasha knows it isn’t always like this—remembers all too well the nights where it feels like he couldn’t buy a goal with an empty net and half an hour—but sometimes placing a shot feels easier than walking.

Some of the other guys are clearly having a tougher time. Kuzya is skating fine, but whatever he got up to last night has his shots all veering off to the left. Burky’s got no power; half his shots are practically fans. Snarls does OK. Sasha saw him absolutely chugging Pedialyte before practice.

Madison probably has the second-strongest shot on the whole team, but he’s rarely on target, and that’s no different today. When he hits the net Sasha half-expects the puck to rocket straight through the twine. He just doesn’t hit the net that much.

When Madison’s done, he skates to a stop next to Sasha to watch the remaining shooters. He’s clearly pissed, throwing snow and shifting his weight.

Sasha taps him lightly on the arm. “Hey, you figure out where to put it, you twenty goals a season guy.”

Madison pops his mouthguard out. “Yeah, no shit.”

Sasha tips his head back and laughs. Fair enough. When he looks back over, Madison at least has half a smile on his face. Even if he’s laughing at Sasha, that counts.

Sasha bumps their shoulders. “You have time,” he says. “Can figure it out.” Nothing would please Sasha more than to see Madison turn into a powerplay nightmare at the point.

College highlights are hard to find, but maybe he’ll manage to come to a game in person once or twice.

Madison bumps him back. “We’re gonna miss you,” he says matter-of-factly. “You gotta go, but. We’ll miss you.”

Sasha will miss him, too. More than he expected to miss a freshman. “Will be OK,” he says. “All the boys are good.” He cracks a grin. “Not so good at me, but still good.”

Backy’s up in the drill. Sasha can’t remember the last time Backy took a slapshot in a game, but his placement is still pretty good. He probably sneaks off to practice them alone and doesn’t tell Sasha about it.

“You’re the captain,” Madison says, leaning his chin on the end of his stick. “Team follows your lead. And the team is good.” He watches the drill, eyes swooping around the ice as Backy finishes up. “It’s a good team to be on.”

Well. That’s a very nice thing to hear.

Sasha leans over and bonks their helmets together. “New captain will be good, too,” he says. He raises his eyebrows and nudges Madison in the side. “Who knows, maybe sometime, you are captain, you decide how to make it good.”

Backy skates to a halt on the other side of Madison. “Not gonna make him captain if he can’t shoot for shit,” he says, and Madison laughs.

“He’s working on it,” Sasha says, smiling as V steps up. “He is learning.”

After the last drill is run, Sasha lingers in his second shower of the day, taking advantage of a functional hot water heater. He feels worn through, like after a win. It’s a good feeling.

By the time he finishes up, half the team has already headed back to the house. Sasha is in no rush. He knows perfectly well how much clean-up there is to do, and he doesn’t intend to push to the front of the line.

When Sasha sees the small manilla envelope resting on his bag, he picks it up between two fingers and taps it against the side of his stall. “What is?”

“We all got them,” Braden says, pulling his shoes on. “Just varsity letters for the year.”

Oh. Right. They’re already more than halfway through second semester. Sasha opens the envelope and looks inside. Same as the other two years, just the school initials embroidered in thick fabric. He’s not sure why schools even hand these out, but he still keeps them. Some sort of American thing. Could mean something someday.

When he gets home, envelope folded and shoved in his pocket, the house is in productive chaos. Madison is directing the collection of TSS’s property, while it looks like Backy is managing general sanitation and waste removal.

“Ovi, would you go get whatever you wore last night?” Madison says, trying valiantly to close a large plastic bin full of shoes. “Everybody is bringing down stuff that needs to be washed.” He jerks his head at a cloth laundry bag on the couch.

Backy, who has his pink rubber gloves on again, raises his eyebrows at Sasha as he picks beer cans up off the floor. Sasha doesn’t get why until he’s in his room.

Shit. The dress.

It’s in a liquid-looking puddle on the floor by Sasha’s desk. It is _not_ inconspicuous.

Sasha stares at it for a minute.

There’s plenty of room in his closet. He only has the one suit.

If someone sees him with it downstairs and recognizes who was wearing it, Sasha has no idea what he would tell them.

If Nicky sees he kept it and jumps to conclusions as to why, Sasha has no idea how he’d stop him.

When you turn the dress inside out, the lining is white and silky. Sasha runs his fingers over it. Smooth. He imagines it touching Nicky for just a second, then stops. Save it for later.

The clothes Sasha tried on yesterday are still scattered across his floor. Sasha rolls the dress up carefully and tucks it in amongst his discards, hauling them into a muddled pile in his arms. He’ll have to come back for the shoes.

Nobody looks twice at what he’s carrying. Not even Backy.

In fairness, T.J. is trying to mop something sticky and pink off the floor with a wad of paper towels, Jojo is wearing more jewelry than he is putting away, and V seems like he’s distracting Madison as much as he’s helping. Sasha’s not very good at being sneaky, but even he can pull this off.

He crams the pile into the laundry bag, giving the smooth lining of the dress a soft touch goodbye. It makes his stomach flip pleasantly to think of the other lives it might lead now. If it shows up in a TSS show he might lose his shit.

He probably won’t see any more TSS shows. Maybe Madison will put photos up on Instagram.

“What next?” he asks Madison, who stops smacking V in the face with a feather boa and faces him. “Need help to carry?” He nods at the full boxes and bags scattered around the room.

“Yeah,” Madison says. “Cole should be here with his car in like ten minutes. But can you check the basement first? Moose fell asleep on the dryer last night and somebody should wake them up.”

 

* * *

 

When the clothes and the makeup and the tiny hungover butch person have all been packed carefully up in Cole’s car, Sasha goes back to his room. He ought to do laundry. He’s not gonna.

He opens up the bottom drawer of his desk and pulls out a heavy shoebox.

There’s still beer in the fridge, so he grabs one and pops it open before wandering out onto the back porch.

It really is spring, now. He can still smell the week’s rain coming up from the backyard soil, but it’s sunny, even in the early evening. They’ll need to borrow a lawn mower from the golf team before long. The back door has started sticking again. He should see if T.J. wants to start up the weekend cookouts soon.

Sasha takes a drink of beer and opens up the shoebox.

He’s got carefully-labeled index cards separating his freshman, sophomore, and junior years. Some of it is real stuff: tournament medals, glossy team photos, a few significant pucks. Some of it is write-ups carefully clipped from newspapers. Usually just the school newspaper, which he’s been on the cover of a few times, but others, too. Semin had brought back an issue from Moscow that listed him as one of the most promising young Russian prospects. Sasha has that one cut out and folded in a Ziploc bag just in case.

The rest is just the moments Sasha wanted to keep.

The student photographers are good about uploading their photos quickly, so Sasha usually can just go to a computer lab the next day and scroll carefully through the shots. It’s easy to tell which ones he printed out, color ink bleeding through the cheap recycled printer paper. He saves them on USB drives, too. He’s not stupid. But it’s nice to be able to pick them up and flip through them sometimes. When he needs to hold it in his hands.

His other two varsity letters are already in there, slotted in their appropriate years. Sasha reaches into his pocket with two fingers and pulls the envelope out, box still balanced on his lap.

The screen door swings open. Sasha knows who it is, but he still looks up. It’s still nice to see him.

He’s put the gloves away. Sasha’s never actually seen him put them on or take them off—it’s like they just appear whenever a cleaning frenzy starts coming on. He’s got one of his endless fucking hats on, but Sasha can see where his still-damp hair curls against his neck.

Sasha does some quick math. It’s been, what five hours since he touched him? Six? Feels like nothing. A lifetime.

Nicky takes the beer from his hand without a word and sinks down next to him on the sagging couch. He takes a long drink, eyeballing Sasha all the while. He swallows. “You being pathetic?”

Sasha smiles and bumps their shoulders. “Yes,” he says, and turns back to the box.

He leafs through some of the earliest photos, angling the box so Nicky can look too. They don’t say anything, but Nicky makes quiet sounds of appreciation or mirth every now and then.

Sasha pauses on a picture of the two of them and Greenie tackling Sema to the boards. Sema had won them that game, booked them a tournament slot that they’d run all the way to the semi-finals. Sasha remembers it, remembers the exact goal, Greenie to Backy to Sema on the powerplay.

Nicky reaches out and plucks the photo from Sasha’s hands as deftly as he’d stolen the beer. His shoulder presses against Sasha’s. “This is a good one,” he says. Sasha will have to find the file and send it to him.

Nicky chews on his lower lip and smiles at the picture. Sasha wishes he had his phone out. “Semin is playing tonight,” Nicky says, flicking his eyes up to Sasha’s. “Should watch.”

They should. Sasha supposes he could haul the projector downstairs and get the whole team gathered for it in the living room. “Want to go to Rudy’s?” The two of them haven’t been to the sports bar in a couple weeks. There are some benefits to being 21. The freshman could probably use a night off anyway.

Nicky smiles minutely and nods, sliding the photo back into place in the box. Sasha leafs through for a few more moments.

Sasha is looking at their team photo from this year when Nicky speaks up again.

“You know,” he says, and when Sasha looks over he’s looking at the picture too. “The first time we met—” he takes one of his long pauses, thinking around whatever he doesn’t know how to say rather than just barreling through. “I remember, freshman year, I thought: OK, cool, I will play with this guy for, maybe...” he shrugs. “Six months? And you would be gone.”

Sasha frowns at him.

Nicky shrugs again. “Would have been enough,” he says, flatly. “Would have been OK. But you stayed.”

Sasha looks down at the box and tries to think. It’s true. NHL teams had been sniffing around when Sasha was seventeen. His friends at home had thought he was crazy not to take the first deal that was offered. Thankfully, his parents had disagreed.

He runs his thumb over the box’s contents, feeling the photos and papers flick against the pad. “I’m not—” He tries again. “I think I needed this. All this.” God, it has taken a long time, and it feels like it happened all at once. “To be ready.”

Nicky presses their shoulders together a little harder. “Ready now?” he says, and the humor in his voice makes Sasha look up and grin.

“Probably, no,” he says, and Nicky’s eyes crinkle at the corners. Sasha’s going to put his mouth there later. “But—ready to try.” He holds Nicky’s gaze. Words are still hard, but he can work around it.

Nicky’s cheeks go just barely pink. Perfect.

“Anyway, that is not when we first meet,” Sasha says, tilting his head at Nicky and raising an eyebrow.

Nicky makes that pinched face that means he’s genuinely surprised. “What?”

Sasha clucks his tongue. “Freshman year. We meet before.” Nicky still looks confused. “In spring. Weekend for, what is it, admitted students. You were in gym, Coach gives me tour. You were on bicycle.” He can picture him so easily, flushed and breathing hard and trying with every cell in his body to pretend nobody else was there.

Nicky scoffs, exasperated. “That’s not meeting,” he says. “I don’t know how you remember that.”

Sasha makes a face, pleased with himself. “You very memorable,” he says, not looking away from Nicky’s face. “Such terrible hair.” God. It really was. Sasha would love him anyway, but still.

Nicky stares back at him, flushes a little more, and shakes his head. He clears his throat. “Going to put that in?” he asks, and gestures towards Sasha’s last varsity letter. Sasha nods and takes it out of the envelope.

Nicky puts the beer down and reaches in his own pocket. “You want a complete set?” He twists a smile and offers an identical letter over. “I’ve already lost my other ones.”

Sasha rolls his eyes. Nicky’s full of shit. He probably has the others boxed up somewhere in Gävle. “I think I will be OK, just three,” he says.

Nicky elbows him in the side. “You don’t want me in there?” he says, voice quiet. Sasha snaps his head over to look at him.

Nicky looks—he doesn’t look afraid. Sasha knows what Nicky looks like when he’s afraid, three masks back and perfectly still. Nicky’s too close to the surface to be afraid, eyes reflective in the evening light. He just looks curious.

He looks lovely.

Sasha’s grandmother on his father’s side died when he was very young, but he still remembers her a little bit. He remembers climbing into her lap and ruining her knitting. She always had forgiven him. He remembers how when she had wanted some peace she would send him out to pick wildflowers on the dacha, later sorting carefully through his finds for the most perfect specimens and laying them to dry flat between heavy books that Sasha couldn’t read yet. It had worked well. Sasha’s father still has some of her pressed flowers, framed between glass.

Sasha tries to imagine Nicky like that. Perfect, preserved, fragile, and over.

He taps his varsity letter against the side of the box, frustrated. “I don’t—” he starts, and then thinks some more. “You are not...small,” he says, finally, and waves the letter lightly in his hand to illustrate.

Nicky squints at him just a little. He is trying not to smile. Sasha can tell. “Neither are you,” he says.

Sasha’s heart sings. No, maybe he isn’t. Maybe the rules are for other people. Nicky just keeps looking at Sasha, that same searching look from the night before with a little less hurt in it.

“We should get you a bigger box, soon,” Nicky says after a moment, smile breaking through, and Sasha finally gives up and cuts him off with a kiss.

Oh, what a gift, to feel the collar of Backy’s t-shirt under his fingertips, to bump noses with him and laugh, to get to kiss him on their back porch that stinks of cigarettes. Sasha wants everything. Who the fuck is going to stop him.

He gets his arms around Nicky’s waist and hauls him half into his lap, ignoring the soft clatter of the shoebox falling and spilling its contents across the porch. Sasha tips his head back and lets Nicky have his way. It’s already better, somehow. How can it already have gotten better? How much better will it be to kiss him for the thousandth time? What secret happy sounds will he make then?

Nicky sighs and grabs a fistful of Sasha’s hair, pulling him back. “You are done being pathetic now?” he says. Sasha thinks that’s probably debatable, given how quickly he’s getting hard and how much he wants Nicky to keep the hat on.

“Yes,” he says anyway, and reaches down to squeeze at Nicky’s thighs. Based on the way Nicky’s eyes flutter just a little, he might have gotten at one of the bruises from last night. Good.

“Good,” Nicky says, tugging on his hair again and leaning in close. “Out here like a sad old man. Not very attractive.”

Sasha grins and digs his thumbs into Nicky’s thighs again. Oh, yes. He probably shouldn’t try to make Nicky come out here, but he can walk right up to that line, especially when it makes Nicky’s mouth fall open softly like that. “ _Old man,_ ” Sasha repeats, mocking. He tilts his head back, looking up at Nicky, and rubs his hands up and down his thighs. “Young enough,” he says, and Nicky grins broadly and kisses him.

Sasha is twenty-one years old. Sasha feels like he’s twenty-one years old.

He rubs his face eagerly into Nicky’s throat. “Young enough to play best hockey,” he says, and Nicky hums and cards a hand through his hair. “Young enough to still fuck you all night after,” he says, dropping his voice lower, and when he bites down on Nicky’s neck he can feel him laughing. He licks a stripe over the bitemark just to hear Nicky giggle. “Young enough, do whatever we want,” he says, and this he says quietest of all.

Nicky hums happily and sits back on his knees. Evening is settling in now, and the light has gone a little blue on his face. “OK, you have to tell me,” he says. “Did you keep it or not?”

It takes Sasha a second. “Oh! No,” he says. “Put it in laundry.”

Nicky raises his eyebrows. “I am surprised.”

Sasha raises his eyebrows back. “That’s why,” he says. He reaches up to try to poke the sharp end of Nicky’s nose and laughs when his hand gets batted away. “You like so much, I get you another one.” Add it to the list.

Nicky rolls his eyes, but still leans in. Sasha expects a kiss, but Nicky bypasses his upturned mouth to speak softly into his ear. “I kept the lipstick.”

Oh, hell. Sasha will die of this, one way or another, tonight or in a hundred years. He twists his head, catching Nicky on the side of the mouth. “Good,” he mumbles. “I keep stockings,” and when Nicky thumps him on the arm he laughs the whole house down.

“Idiot,” Nicky mutters.

Sasha kisses him on the corner of the mouth again. Someone will probably come investigate soon. Sasha doesn’t want to move just yet. “Whatever you want,” he says, cupping a hand behind Nicky’s neck. “You will show me?”

Nicky brushes some of Sasha’s hair off his forehead, delicate. Sasha closes his eyes to feel it better. “OK,” he says.

“OK,” Sasha says, and opens his eyes. Nicky is still looking at him. “I am excited to see.”

**Author's Note:**

> WHEW. Thank you for reading! Go see your local drag troupe, tip your servers, never bind with ace bandages, and always think about kissing your friends.
> 
> I listened to a lot of Icona Pop while writing this, but I’m not gonna tell you what to do.
> 
> This fic would not have happened, as always, without wadeleader in chief [kingsoftheimpossible](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingsoftheimpossible/) and the one true editrix of my heart [angularmomentum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angularmomentum/pseuds/angularmomentum). I must also tip my hat to [constantine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/constantine/), whose [tumblr post about whether hockeys could walk in heels](http://csykora.tumblr.com/post/172053334041/the-question-is-this-would-hockey-players-be) is basically the reason this whole thing happened.
> 
> Most of all, this fic would not have happened if it weren’t for the night I saw my friend perform in a dark basement theater, lost my mind entirely, and literally fell on my knees and begged her to let me join this phenomenal ludicrous thing she was part of. Thanks for that.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at [hyggles](http://hyggles.tumblr.com/). Comments will help me last the winter.


End file.
